Home Course in Religion - Softcover

Soto, Gary

3.44

9 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087701857X ISBN 13: 9780877018575

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 1991

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Book by Soto, Gary

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From Publishers Weekly:

The first half of this wry, meditative collection brings us through Soto's boyhood and teenage years and his tentatively evolving spiritual and sensual awareness. There is the usual kid's stuff here--shoplifting candy bars, quote is correct/pk "walking with Pepsi cans smashed onto my shoes"--but Soto was no ordinary kid, pondering the nature of the soul, God's intrusive omniscience and the absurdity of Catholic ritual. Soto ( Who Will Know Us? ) was also possessed of a keen imagination that sought to elaborate upon the fairly ordinary circumstances of his youth. In his teens, he began to question his physical and metaphysical identity: "I had these feelings / I was Chinese, that I had lived before." In the latter half of the book, the poet searches the practical aspects of his adult life--his marriage, job, hobbies--for signs of a transcendent reality. In the end, sadly enough, he is sure of only our material status: "We invent misery for our bodies, / Then our minds, and then, having nothing else to do, / Look for ways to make it stop." Soto's language is sweetly nostalgic, but never sentimental; his ruminations are full of unusual imagery that is both amusing and ingenuous.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This is a spiritual autobiography of growing up Mexican American in Fresno, California in the 1960s. Author of many poetry volumes, essays, and prose memoirs, Soto (b. 1952) documents a Catholic family's rite of passage by showing how "the blown tires that bumped along/ on a filthy current" are transformed into a spiritual quest for the mysterious meanings of "the stained-glass windows/ Breathing in light." These novelistic, narrative poems--about the death of his father, his stepfather's drinking, wrestling and karate, marriage and fatherhood--seek religious dimensions of a secular age: "I want very badly to know how to talk about Christ." He does so in compassionate poems that define the holy in terms of everyday life. One man's path to belief becomes a struggle to articulate how we all take a "home course in religion."-- Frank Allen, Schenectady Cty. Community Coll., N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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