Barrio Boy: 40th Anniversary Edition
“In 1971, at the age of sixty-six, the labour activist, educator and scholar Ernesto Galarza (1905-1984) publishedBarrio Boy,a memoir of the long migration of his family from a small village in the Sierra Madre to California.Barrio Boyimmediately became a classic of Chicano literature, and on its fortieth anniversary has now been published in a new edition with an introduction by the critic, biographer and short-story writer Ilan Stavans.” —Times Literary Supplement “Galarza’s book is about growing up—first in Mexico, then in America. To this reader, it is on the same artistic level asBlack BoyorCall It Sleepor evenHuckleberry Finn. . . . As with Wright and Roth and Twain, we are given a near-perfect tale of rising from absolute poverty to middle-class security, but instead of a woeful recounting, it is filled with the joy of discovery: from living in the lively muddy streets of a small village in Nayarit to surviving, wide-eyed, in the lively and noisy barrios of Sacramento.” —RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities “The 40th anniversary edition of Galarza’s book, now a standard text in high school and college classrooms, has become so popular that it has . . . achieved the dubious honor of being the subject of study guides and essays available for purchase online.” —Occidental College