In his memoir Barrio Boy, Ernesto Galarza relates the story of his youth. Born in Mexico, Galarza and his family eventually move to the United States to avoid the fighting of the Mexican Revolution (1910 to early 1920s).

Some important quotes to consider are those that highlight how Ernesto's life changed as he grew and moved to different places. Early in the book, Ernesto is roughly 4 years-old and is living with his family in a small, very rural Mexican pueblo named Jalcocotán. He recalls the feeling of wonder that he had when he would sit with his mother and read their only book.

Books were rare. My mother had one, which she kept in the cedar box. It had a faded polychrome drawing on the cover with the title La Cocinera Poblana, a cookbook which had belonged to Grandmother Isabel. We did not need it for cooking the simple, never-changing meals of the family. It was the first book from which Doña Henriqueta ever read to me. The idea of making printed words sound like the things you already knew about first came through to me from her reading of the recipes. I thought it remarkable that you could find oregano in a book as well as in the herb pot back of our house. I learned to pick out words like sal and frijoles, chile piquín and panocha—things we ate. From hearing my mother repeat the title so often when she read to us, and from staring at the cover drawing, I guessed that the beautiful girl in the colorful costume was the Cocinera Poblana. The words above her picture were obviously her name. I memorized them and touched them. I could read.

Ernesto's mother begins to teach him to read in earnest when he is six, but their lives are regularly interrupted by unexpected events. The family begin to prepare to leave Jalcocotán when they learn that the fighting from the Mexican Revolution has spread to their region. As they contemplate leaving, Halley's Comet appears.

Every man, woman, and child gathered in the plaza to stare at the heavenly kite with the bushy tail. Shooting stars we saw every night, streaking across the most unexpected places of the sky. They came in a wink and were gone in another. A comet was something else. Don Cleofas said it was bigger than the earth and that the tail was so long nobody could guess how many millions of kilometers it was from tip to tip. Jesús and Catarino and I were called down from the tapanco the first night the comet appeared. I caught the awe of the older people who were listening to Don Cleofas tell that a comet foretold something important, and serious. He said that this one meant La Revolución.

The family eventually move to the United States, first to Tuscon and then to Sacramento. Ernesto finds many things foreign and confusing in his new home.

In more personal ways we had to get used to the Americans. They did not listen if you did not speak loudly, as they always did. In the Mexican style, people would know that you were enjoying their jokes tremendously if you merely smiled and shook a little, as if you were trying to swallow your mirth. In the American style there was little difference between a laugh and a roar, and until you got used to them you could hardly tell whether the boisterous Americans were roaring mad or roaring happy.

In Sacramento, after Ernesto's mother remarries another Mexican immigrant, the family move into a suburb that...