Nickel and Dime

By Gary Soto

Book Overview

"I'm outta here I got a future " crows Roberto Silva when he is down-sized out of his job as a security guard at a bank in Oakland. But Roberto's future isn't the one he was looking forward to. This is the 1990s, and upward mobility in the city requires resources that Roberto is short of. Before he knows it, he is living in an abandoned quonset hut and then on the street, where he crosses paths with poet Silver Mendez, a survivor of the 1960s whose luck has run out, and Gus Hernandez, a compadre from his days at the bank. The ups and downs of the lives of men who are always looking for a way to earn a cup of coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, their desperate ingenuity, their hunger, their dauntless optimism have never been brought to life as vividly as in this sweet, sad, funny trio of interlocking stories by one of America's most original writers.

"An utterly distinct literary experience. No one writes like Gary Soto. Rather than falling into the trap of politicizing his subjects--blaming Anglos, blaming the church, blaming anyone at all--he simply presents the lives of these three men with emphasis on the minute details, the micro-decisions, the often-perverse impulses that actually comprise so much of human existence. By doing so, he achieves universality."--Gerald Haslam

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826321860
• ISBN13: 9780826321862
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 197 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

love this book

i read this book twice and i loved every part of it the story takes place in my hometown of oakland califas in the early 90s it's about a chicano named Roberto Silva who loses his job as a bank security guard and becomes homeless and it follows him in his adventures in the streets of oakland dealing with crooked cops dope fiends and many other obstecles it also shows him trying to hustle to make ends meet like selling christmas trees he found or trying to sell christmas wreaths he made from some tree branches which eventually he sells to a rich man that puts the wreath in the front of his car and the car catches fire there is also another person in this story gus hernandez a mexican immigrant who also works at the bank as a security guard and is ready to retire and silver mendez a down and out poet from the chicano movementdays in the 60s who is trying to hustle to make ends meet ... the one thing i love about this book is that it takes place in my home town of oakland and it also takes place in the neighborhood i grew up the fruitvale district in east oakland the barrio of the oaktown i like how gary soto mentioned so many places and landmarks of the fruitvale district like the cesar chavez library sanborne park now called josie de la cruz park la clinica de la raza the old montgamery wards building he gave it such great detail thats my 2 cents on this book peace ....

Soto es el chingon

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.

A Hilarious Collection of Anti-Heroes

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.