be self-sufficient and strong. He does odd-jobs to make a living and lives on his own in a roach-infested apartment, since his mother has moved away. While there are young men and women whose lives are similar to Eddie’s, it is safe to say that the typical teenager does not face such conditions. Many teenagers hold jobs while attending school to further their future goals, but they have parents or a family to provide for them. Eddie has dropped out of college and currently paints sidewalk curbs or takes on any work he can find to make a few dollars. “I was down to nickels and dimes in my ashtray at home.” The teen whose family is financially unstable can relate to Eddie’s plight. In addition, the few who need to support themselves will connect to Eddie’s constant hunger and desperate need to find any job. The one who stays in college and does not need to worry about obtaining money to buy food cannot quite understand.

Additionally, the typical teen does not need to deal with gangs, although they are prevalent in many neighborhoods. Eddie tries to stay clear of gang life, but he still must worry about staying alive. Constantly looking over his shoulder, Eddie cautiously goes about his life knowing that Angel or Samuel are waiting for him. This kind of fear for one’s life is not something that most people must face at the age of 19.

Eddie does face issues that most teenagers will face at one point or another. His interest in girls surfaces throughout the book, but his mind is too preoccupied to pursue a real relationship. His friendships place him in awkward positions at times. For instance, he must decide what to do about his cousin’s murder. He was close to Jesus but he does not want to seek revenge. While the typical teenager does not face such serious decisions about avenging murder, he will face choices in peer pressure. Eddie is constantly pushed to make this choice, and he stays strong in his decision not to get involved. He tells Angel: “He’s gone. You can’t bring him back.” He only confronts Angel when he feels he has no other options left.

Eddie thinks: “My eyes were raw, my soul trampled by bad luck and bad luck’s brother, hard times.” Overall, the typical teenager does not have such a dismal outlook on his own life.

Eddie's story is that of the traditional American Dream in which one can rise from poverty to success and a much better quality of life. Another Mexican American who rose from a neighborhood where 

Laundry wept from the lines, the faded flags of poor, ignorant, unemployable people.... Still the babies cried, and their crying stirred up our frustration because we were like those strollers going back and forth, back and forth, going nowhere

is Dr. Ricardo Sanchez, poet, teacher, and activist. The Sanchezes moved from Mexico to El Paso before Dr. Sanchez was born. Raised in a neighborhood whose name indicated its danger, El Barrio del Diablo [neighborhood of the devil], the intellectually curious boy became a part of a subculture called pachuco subculture, whose members adopted their own style of dress and created a language called calo which combined idioms from both Spanish and English. Raised in the 1950's, Sanchez encountered prejudices from his teachers whom he told that he would like to be a poet; one replied that people like him did not become poets, they were janitors.

Sanchez was so disappointed with his opportunities that he dropped out of school and enlisted in the military. Although he was accepted into officer candidate school, Sanchez lost his opportunity after learning of the death of two of his brothers because he reacted emotionally and ended up committing an armed robbery. After he was paroled, he married, but his economic situation and peer pressure led him into another armed robbery and a prison term. Nevertheless, Sanchez improved himself in Ramsey prison of Texas by becoming a librarian and teacher. Never hiding his past, Sanchez went on to educate youth against the glorification of the lifestyles that lead to prison. In 1969 he receive a Ford Foundation sponsorship as a Frederick Douglass Fellow in Journalism. With just a G.E.D., Sanchez earned employment as a staff writer and humanities instructor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Of course, he went on to earn a Ph.D. and become a renowned writer and poet, his dream. Like Eddie, Dr. Sanchez overcame the challenges of his racial and economic situation in which he was born.

Fresno is shown to be a community where there is little in way of hope.  In describing the neighborhood in which he lives, Eddie articulates a condition of life where challenges and obstacles present themselves at every step:  "I returned to my apartment, which was in a part of Fresno where fences sagged and the paint blistered on houses. Laundry wept from the lines, the faded flags of poor, ignorant unemployable people.”   The faces of those who live in Eddie's neighborhood can be envisioned.  The laundry and people in the neighborhood are "faded," alienated by the conditions that surround them.  Eddie is constantly challenged with the external forces in the neighborhood that wish to bring him along on the path of futility:  "I told myself to keep a steady weight on my shoulders and to stay out of trouble and run a straight line-to stay away from the police and the rumblings of vatos who have nothing to do.”   Eddie describes his neighborhood as one where there is a propensity to descend a world of bad choices.  It is so evident that external forces always weigh on him and, in response, he has to force himself to "run a straight line." Eddie's neighborhood is one where "your life could spill like soda right on the black asphalt, spill before you could touch your wound.”   These descriptions help to convey the sense of hopelessness in Eddie's neighborhood and the challenges merely living presents.

In terms of sensory details, Eddie's description of the onion smell that is buried is one such element that defines the world in which he lives.  For Eddie, this smell is pervasive, reflective of something more profound:  "Babies in strollers pinched up their faces and wailed for no reason. Perhaps as practice for the coming years. I thought about the giant onion, that remarkable bulb of sadness."  The "smell" of sadness is one such detail that is evident in Eddie's neighborhood.  It is undeniable and inescapable.  Eddie conveys what he sees in his neighborhood through how the sun would "gnaw" at his eyes,  "with its bright hunger so that every other minute my pupils had to adjust themselves.”  The searing heat of both the sun and the blight that hopelessness causes enhances the feel of such a setting.  Such a physical description is also evident in how Eddie describes a hunger, both physical and what could be seen as emotional, that fills the environment, one where it was "crawling from one end of the street to the other." These physical descriptions help to illuminate how Eddie's neighborhood looks, feels, and smells.  They are vivid descriptions from the book that Soto uses to make the reader immediately identify with Eddie's world and his need to escape it.