A Fire in the Hands, by Gary Soto

A Fire in My Hands. By Gary Soto. ISBN # 978-0-15-205564-6

This book is a collection of poems about Gary Soto’s youth in Fresno, CA. This book’s 32 poems capture his everyday teen years. A few of these 32 poems deal with more recent times in Soto’s life.

Soto does a good job of showing the reader how he felt growing up in Fresno. His poems deal with varied topics from his first date to how bad he is at math. My favorite poem is titled “Door-to-Door”, which is about Soto’s experience of going door-to-door when Soto’s mom sold Avon products. In this poem, Soto clearly shows how he disliked one customer, not because the customer was cheap but because how his mother was disrespected.

There two things in this book that distract from the poetry. First, every poem has an explanation of what motivated the poem. I think that this distracts from the mystery of the poetry. Secondly, the interview with Soto does not add to the poetry. The interview and the explanations of each poem give this book an instructional flavor, which is something I did not expect when I opened this book.