Jesse by Gary Soto

From the Publisher

In his first novel for young adults, Gary Soto paints a moving portrait of two sweet, ambitious Mexican American brothers who hope junior college will help them escape their heritage of tedious physical labor. Their struggles are humorous, true to life, and deeply affecting, and young adults will sympathize with them as they work through their problems and eventually come to terms with what is possible in an imperfect world. “Readers looking for a finely written, contemplative narrative will appreciate this work.”--School Library Journal

The ALAN Review

Jesse is a gentle story of a gentle boy growing into manhood. There is violence-Jesse must fight a bully twice-and there is an ominous background of a drunken stepfather, poverty and prejudice in Mexican-American life, and the era of Vietnam. Author Gary Soto nevertheless writes in a quiet tone of hope and faith. Jesse, artistic and religious, is forced to field work to pay for food while he attends a junior college after leaving high school. He remembers that once "I worked on my knees nine hours - one hundred seventy-eight trays of grapes-so I could buy my mom an umbrella." The book ends with the shock of Abel, Jesse's older brother, being drafted. A friend (named Jesus) tells Jesse not to follow by enlisting. Instead he returns to summer field labor. Readers of Jesse will gain appreciation for a young man persevering amid family dysfunction, ethnic injustice, and confusion about goals and girls.

BookList

To escape a home dominated by his alcoholic stepfather, 17-year-old Jesse abruptly leaves high school, moves into an apartment with his older brother, Abel, and takes classes at Fresno City College. It is 1968, and the brothers face both the threat 20of being drafted and the daily grind of their poverty. Racial and class prejudice limit their employment opportunities to field labor, and they pick melons, oranges, or cotton, depending on the season. Soto skillfully reveals the truth about the brothers' lives through details: in a particularly wrenching scene, they try hitchhiking to Pismo Beach 20for their spring break. Stranded for several days along the road, they shiver together through the night, never reaching the ocean. Jesse is artistically gifted and shy around girls; his struggles to communicate with girls, to date, and to succeed both socially and academically in school transcend the specifics of race and class. But Soto's story of a particular Mexican American boy in Fresno, California, during the height of the Vietnam War is rich in the details of Jesse's life and culture--his friendships with other Mexican Americans, his involvement in Caesar Chavez's farm workers' movement, his struggles to find himself and a meaningful life in spite of the limits placed on him by poverty and prejudice. All in all, a highly readable novel.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0590528378
  
• ISBN-13: 9780590528375
• Format: Mass Market Paperback, 166pp
• Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
• Pub. Date: June 1996
• Edition Description: Reissue
• Sales Rank: 46,370
• Age Range: Young Adult