A Disorganized Family In Gary Soto's Looking For Work

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Do you have any friend or relatives that are considered to be broken or disorganized family? Do you know that many disorganized family are likely to ties with their extended family? If you know any broken or disorganized families, you may realized that a broken family usually faced many difficulties, such as financial problem, missing family members, and they tend to be unhappy comparing to others. Moreover, missing a father figure in the house for a child could cause numbers of problems. In the novel “Looking for Work” the main character and also the author who named Gary Soto, a nine year old Mexican American boy, he was from a disorganized and broken family. That Gary desire to live out a life style just like the standard white American …show more content…

At that time Gary is a nine year old Mexican American boy, and he was raised by his single mom, of course his family was consider to be a low income family. However, because of the fact that Gary love’s to watch television shows, he also wants to live out like what’s on the television show. In the novel he says:” When I spent the mornings in the front of the television that showed the comfortable lives of white kids. There were no beatings, no rifts in the family. They wore bright clothes; toys tumbled from their closets” (Soto 25). Which Gary shows that he wanted to live just like the white kid who has bright clothes and owns plenty toys; however, this is not his case, his family does not wear nice and clean clothes not even while they are eating. What leads them to this circumstance is that there family lacks an adult male figure in the house, which is father. Due to the lack of a father figure, there are no financial support from a father and Gary’s mom is a hard working single women who also needs to take care and raise three child in the family; Gary’s family does not have much …show more content…

The novel “The Color of Family Ties”, by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, through their research they found out that the ratio of disorganized family for Black and Latino/a families are higher than White families. That white families are more nuclear, which means a couple with their dependent children. In contrast, Black and Latino/a families has a high ratio that they often live with their extended families (Naomi and Sarkisian 47). This novel ties in to the “Looking for Work” novel because Gerstel and Sarkisian shows a research regarding how Latino families are disorganized, and the way how Mexican families lives are just like Gary’s family, the extended family. We know that Gary’s family are disorganized, but nevertheless, Gary has extended families members who he lives together with. Gary’s family showed solidarity love by just help each other out and spending time together. “We ran home for my bike and when my sister found out that we were going swimming, she started to cry because she didn’t have fifteen cents but only an empty Coke bottle”(24 Soto). This is Gary’s cousin Debra who needs fifteen cents to go to the swimming pool, of course Gary and his friend helped Debra out. Other time that showed Gary’s family love is that Gary’s mother always let Gary’s play with his friends outside, not because she does not love Gary is because

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