Throughout time, in every culture, human beings have erected fences, real or imagined. Fences are the stumbling blocks we face in life. Some of them we tear down. Some of them we climb over. Yet some of them prove impenetrable, or so we think. This is true of people of every race, every social ...

As Carlos takes the football field, every young boy in the stands idolizes him. The short, wide shouldered young man is going up against the best defense in the state not knowing what is going to happen this Friday night. As Carlos and the rest of the Permian Panthers take the field ...

BackgroundGary Soto was born on April 12, 1952, in the farming community of Fresno, California, to Mexican-American parents. In his essay "Being Mean" he talks of how his father and grandfather worked at the Sun Maid Raisin Factory and his mother peeled potatoes at Reddispud. Soto's father faced an ...

"Singing In The Hills", by Bill and Hazel Westfall, section one, forward through page fifty-eight. In this section, Bill and Hazel tell stories from their childhood in this first section entitled "Where Our Music Comes From." Bill and his wife Hazel talk about how they got their...