As an adult, Ernesto Galarza frequently told stories about his childhood in Mexico and his experiences immigrating to the United States. He was encouraged to write down his experiences in a memoir, which became Barrio Boy. He describes the book as a series of “thumbnail sketches” that recount his own experiences from the perspective of a child but link to larger historical processes. He was motivated to write the memoir to push back against narratives that Mexican Americans had a damaged self-image due to the loss of their culture. The story is about his acculturation to American culture and how he maintained ties to his Mexican heritage.

Barrio Boy begins in Jalcocotán, or Jalco, a small village in the mountains of the Sierra Madre de Nayarit in Mexico where Ernesto Galarza was born in 1905. The village has one unpaved street that takes eight minutes to walk across. The street is lined with identical cottages made from adobe, or packed earth. The houses have no windows, steeped rooves made with palm thatch, and stone fences in the backyard. The street has no name, the houses have no numbers, and there are no lights.