Gary Soto's "Mexicans Begin Jogging" and

Langston Hughes' "Dinner Guest Me"

It is quite interesting to note the fact that poems “Mexicans Begin Jogging" by Gary Soto and Langston Hughes' "Dinner Guest Me" appear to be one of the best in a manner that they are very close to real life examples. They give you an insight about the things to come and possibly that is why it is fairly significant to acknowledge the realities of life. It might be possible that at times one may get confused because the two writers have a fairly similar way of writing and even the essays seem quite similar.

Gary Soto's poem "Mexicans Begin Jogging" is both technically and emotionally skillful a story that applies both at some level to all Americans and one that is in other ways unique to the Latino experience (litmed.med.nyu.edu).

Gary Soto's "Mexican's Begin Jogging," explores an array of emotions twisting from desire to anxiety as the narrative unfolds into an inspiring tale of courage and freedom. It delves into the constant struggle to strive for something better in one man's race towards a new life. Although the poem is simply told, Soto enhances the theme through the careful use of several poetic elements including lyric, imagery, and carpe diem.

"I ran from that industrial road to the soft / Houses where people paled at the turn of an autumn sky." The "amazed crowds" watched as these aliens ran through their neighborhood--"jogged" in the parlance of the well-to-do for whom running means leisure activity. As Soto runs past the white suburbanites, he salutes them, embracing the symbols of America --"baseball, milkshakes"--and comments wryly on the sociologists for whom he is another statistic in the assimilation process (litmed.med.nyu.edu).

Soto addresses the dilemma of being neither Mexican nor American, of traveling the path between the ...