Question

Read the excerpt from Gary Soto’s short story "Like Mexicans.”

My grandmother gave me bad advice and good advice when I was in my early teens. For the bad advice, she said that I should become a barber because they made good money and listened to the radio all day. “Honey, they don’t work como burros,” she would say every time I visited her. She made the sound of donkeys braying. “Like that, honey!” For the good advice, she said that I should marry a Mexican girl. “No Okies, hijo”—she would say— “Look, my son. He marry one and they fight every day about I don’t know what and I don’t know what.” For her, everyone who wasn’t Mexican, black, or Asian were Okies. The French were Okies, the Italians in suits were Okies. . . . she lectured me on the virtues of the Mexican girl.

The complex narrative structure used in the excerpt is an example of
acknowledging the story as fictional.
several narrators being used.
establishing a work of fiction that is based on nonfiction.
the chronological order of events being manipulated.

Answer 1

several narrators being used.

The passage shifts between the first-person narrator’s voice and the grandmother’s direct speech, creating multiple narrative voices rather than a single, straightforward narrator.