Nickel and Dime

Rating:
Summary: A Hilarious Collection of Anti-Heroes
Review: By page 30 I was in stitches! Soto has created three of the most charming losers--victims of circumstances and just plain bad luck--in this funny novel that chronicles their path to loserdom. Roberto, Silver and Gus are three vatos trying to keep themselves righteous, but that's pretty hard to do when nothing goes right and any attempt to persevere only hurts their chances for survival even more. I can't say enough about the humor of this book. It's about time we Chicanos learn to laugh at ourselves and Soto has shown us one healthy way to do that--through on-the-mark writing, sharp, satyrical, and yet sensitive.

Rating:
Summary: Soto es el chingon
Review: Gary Soto shows once again that he is not only one of the best Chicano authors out there, but one of the best modern authors, period. In Nickle and Dime, Soto weaves three interconnected stories that detail turning points of the lives of three vatos trying to get by in 1990's Oakland. We meet Roberto, a simple and innocent Mexican-American bank security guard who falls on hard times when he loses his job; Silver, a middle-aged Chicano poet who's having trouble adjusting to life in a world that doesn't have much use for "Raza-power" rhetoric; and Gus, a Mexicano who is getting ready for retirement.

All three stories are very good, but it is the first, "We Ain't Asking Much," which is Soto's tour de force. Soto manages to be simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking as he looks into how Roberto deals with losing his job and being evicted. Soto plays against the stereotype of the "lazy bum / lazy Mexican" in creating a character who is actually quiet enterprising (and capitalist) in his attempts to get off the streets. However, run-ins with a senile old woman, racist cops, a junkie with a sombrero and most of all, his own ineptitude (witness his attemps to sell rich people twigs in the guise of Christmas ornaments) ultimately doom his efforts. A top-notch story, it really made me re-think my attitudes toward homelessness.

The second story, deals with homelessness as well, as Silver finds out that Chicano poetry just won't pay his bills. It is only in the third story, which is about Roberto's old "compa" Gus, that Soto shows us a character with any stability. Interestingly, Silver is the only of the three men who doesn't meet with redemption (if redemption, in this book, equals a roof over ones head and food in one's stomach) by the end of the book. One wonders what moral Soto (an old Chicano poet) is giving us by having the old Chicano poet Silver left out in the cold, literally and figuratively. Perhaps it is a comment on the need to keep the ideals of the Raza movement relevant to changing times? In any case, I highly recommend Nickle and Dime. Gary Soto once again manages to be as thought-provoking as he is entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: there but for the grace of God go I
Review: Nickel and Dime is three intertwined short stories about Chicano men at different levels of poverty: Roberto, who is offered a severance package to leave his job as a security guard at a bank, and is soon living out of a car, scrambling for a cup of coffee; Silver, a poet who was well-known in the 1970s now looking to give speeches for a couple of hundred dollars to make rent; and Gustavo, the faithful bank security guard, former co-worker of Roberto, who works till his retirement for people who don't care about him one way or the other.

This is the tale of 3 Chicano men doing the best they can and not coming up with very much -- their Chicano friends are making it and they are falling by the wayside. Yet there is hope as you read about them, and there is an almost philosophical voice about class and money in the United States, especially through the eyes of men who are not so young as to be completely idealistic, but not so old that they have let go of their dreams.

This is a good quick read that will stay with you for a long time afterwards!