A Literary Collage

About the Book

A Literary Collage is a collection of short stories. Some of them are fiction (like “The Way It Was”); others relate experiences of the writer himself (for example “New York City or Bust”). Some are more or less expository writing (like “In Llama Land, There Are One-Man Bands”).

About the Author

Ronald Joseph Tocchini was born in San Francisco, California, in 1941. His parents were Italian. He grew up speaking Italian and English and spent his childhood and adolescence in the Marina, which was largely Italian. He attended Saint Ignatius High School, where he took college prep courses and played football, basketball, and track-and-field. His accomplishments won him a full four-year scholarship to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Ronald, or Ron as he was called by his friends, made the dean’s list in his junior year. He graduated in good standing in 1964. After graduation, the author worked at the San Francisco Produce Market and worked on a secondary teaching credential. Mr. Tocchini, as students called him, taught on the high school level for eleven years. His courses were Spanish, Italian, English, and History. He also coached football, tennis, and track. In his spare time, the pedagogue studied and received a master’s degree in Spanish. Later, he taught Spanish and completed all courses for his PhD in romance language and literatures at UC Berkeley. The courses he taught at UC Berkeley were lower division and intermediate. Mr. Tocchini ended his career after teaching all levels of Spanish at the City College of San Francisco for twenty-three years.