Gary Soto’s “Oranges” is a narrative poem that was first published in Poetry magazine in 1983. It then appeared in Soto’s collection Black Hair (1985), as well as his poetry collection for children, A Fire in My Hands (2006), the title of which comes from the poem’s text. "Oranges" is one of Soto’s most popular poems because it centers the common experience of first love. The poem is widely anthologized and oft-taught due to its straight-forward diction and reliability.

The semi-autobiographical "Oranges," like a majority of his poems, is set in a working-class neighborhood in Fresno, California. Soto’s childhood and teenage years often inspired his early work. While Soto identifies as Chicano, his poems are renowned for their universal quality; his work has been praised for its vivid imagery and ability to convey Mexican-American experiences.

Poet Biography

Gary Soto was born on April 12, 1952, in Fresno, a city central to California’s agricultural industry. Soto’s parents, Manuel and Angie, were Mexican-American laborers, who picked crops like oranges, grapes, and cotton. When Soto was five, his father was killed in an industrial accident. His mother was left to care for three children alone and was forced to move the family to a poor neighborhood in Fresno—a rough barrio. As a young man, Soto worked with his older brother in the fields and factories around Fresno.

Though Soto was a poor high school student, he did discover a love of literature and read widely. After attending Fresno City College, he transferred to University of California, Fresno, where he studied under working-class poet Philip Levine, who encouraged Soto’s work and made him consider a career as a poet. In 1975, Soto married Carolyn Sadako Oda. The next year, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine, and published his first book of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin, which won the United States Award. His next collection, The Tale of Sunlight, was well received and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1978. During this same time, Soto’s daughter was born.

After winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, shortly followed by National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1981, Soto began to write memoirs of his life in Fresno, including Living up the Street (1985), Small Faces (1986), Lesser Evils: Ten Quartets (1988), and A Summer Life (1990). Living up the Street received an American Book Award. Soto began teaching English and Chicano Studies at University of California-Berkeley in 1979, but in 1992, he quit teaching to concentrate on his writing career.

Soto is a diverse writer, having produced poetry, memoirs, plays, novels, short stories, a libretto for an opera, and several children’s books. His work features themes such as family, community, and place. Like his adult fiction, his children’s work shows the challenges Mexican-Americans face while living in the United States.

Poem Text

Soto, Gary. “Oranges.” 1983. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Gary Soto’s “Oranges” is an autobiographical narrative poem of 56 lines in free verse. In the poem, a 12-year-old boy goes for a walk with a girl he likes on a winter’s day—we are meant to understand this as his first romantic encounter. The temperature is so cool that the boy can see his breath. The boy carries two oranges, as well as five cents. The boy walks to the girl’s house to pick her up, where a dog barks until the girl exits to meet him. After walking through the neighborhood, the boy and the girl enter a store, where the bell alerts the saleswoman, who approaches to help. The children look at the sweets and the boy asks the girl what she wants as a treat. While she searches, the boy knows that he only has five cents to spend. When the girl picks out a piece of chocolate that costs ten cents, the boy quickly figures out how to avoid humiliation, placing on the counter his nickel and one of his oranges. The boy and the saleswoman exchange a glance, and he can tell she knows exactly what is going on. The action jumps to the boy and girl walking again, this time hand and hand. When they pause, the girl opens her candy, which reveals that the saleswoman accepted the boy’s payment. Having prepared for the fact that he could not buy a sweet for himself, too, the boy takes the rind off his orange. He notes that if anyone looked, its brightness might look like a flame.