t makes Chato feel part of his father's world and also more grown-up in his own world than he really is:
My father and his friends were in the mood to laugh at everything and I was proud to laugh along with them while I sat sunning on the steps (11).
The boy is self-conscious when his father draws him too much into the conversation, brags about him, kids him, but he is more than willing to hang on his father's every word as the older man talks about the village in Mexico and the life lived there, a life that contrasts sharply with what the family is experiencing now in East Los Angeles. The words of his father open a whole different world for the boy, a world exaggerated by the older man's love for his own memories:
Yes, they admitted, there was hunger down there but the food had such a taste on it. The beans themselves were better
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