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Barrio Boy

One boy's journey from a remote Mexican village to the barrio of Sacramento.
Reading guide
Barrio Boy is a standalone memoir, so it can be read on its own with no prior knowledge needed. Ilan Stavans's introduction can be read first for context or afterwards.
The memoir opens in the mountain village of Jalcocotan, where Galarza was born, and follows his childhood through the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution. It then traces his move at eight to the barrio of Sacramento, California, where he began to understand the realities of segregation.

Description

Barrio Boy is Ernesto Galarza's memoir of his early years, beginning in the tiny village of Jalcocotan in the Sierra Madre de Nayarit. Born in an adobe cottage at the end of its only street, he grew up in a community so isolated that arriving there was always a surprise. The book follows him through the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution and on to Sacramento, California, where he arrived at eight and encountered segregation in a bustling early twentieth-century barrio.

First published in 1971, the book has long been taught in American high school and university classrooms. This fortieth-anniversary edition from the University of Notre Dame Press includes an introduction by Ilan Stavans that places Galarza, later a labour organiser and historian, in context. Readers come to it for its humour, its occasional sadness and its rare feel for how a child measures time and place.

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