The Pushcart Prize–winning poet’s memoir of his criminal youth and years in prison: a “brave and heartbreaking” tale of triumph over brutal adversity (The Nation). Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “astonishing narrative” of his life before, during, and immediately after the years he spent in the maximum-security prison garnered tremendous critical acclaim. An important chronicle that “affirms the triumph of the human spirit,” it went on to win the prestigious 2001 International Prize (Arizona Daily Star). Long considered one of the best poets in America today, Baca was illiterate at the age of twenty-one when he was sentenced to five years in Florence State Prison for selling drugs in Arizona. This raw, unflinching memoir is the remarkable tale of how he emerged after his years in the penitentiary—much of it spent in isolation—with the ability to read and a passion for writing poetry. “Proof there is always hope in even the most desperate lives.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram “A hell of a book, quite literally. You won’t soon forget it.” —The San Diego U-T “This book will have a permanent place in American letters.” —Jim Harrison, New York Times–bestselling author of A Good Day to Die
A Place to Stand, the wrenching memoir of Jimmy Santiago Baca, details how the written word helped him overcome a life of violence, bigotry, and crime.
In an extraordinary memoir, one of America's leading poets describes his youth in New Mexico, his troubled adolescence, his years as a drug dealer in Arizona and San Diego, and the personal redemption that occurred after he was arrested and ...
The first novel from award-winning memoirist, poet, and activist, Jimmy Santiago Baca, it is a passionate and galvanizing addition to Chicano literature. “The sheer passion that drives Baca’s novel is undeniable.” —Publishers Weekly ...
This book draws on psychodynamic systems thinking to offer a new understanding of the journey from being an individual to joining society as a citizen.
Baca passionately explores the troubled years of his youth, from which he emerged with heightened awareness of his ethnic identify as a Chicano, his role as a witness for the misunderstood tribal life of the barrio, and his redemptive ...
These are poems that revitalize the national dialogue: raging against war and imprisonment, celebrating family and the bonds of friendship, heightening appreciation for and consciousness of the environment.
“In Jimmy Santiago Baca’s haunting story collection, intricate family dramas . . . play out against the luminous, wide-open backdrop of New Mexico.” —Los Angeles Times In his first foray into short fiction, award-winning poet and ...
Black Mesa Poems is rooted in the American Southwest, the setting of Jimmy Santiago Baca's highly acclaimed long narrative poem, Martin & Meditations on the South Valley (New Directions, 1987).
A highly relevant and gripping novel that challenges us to ask what it means to forgive while seeking justice and to pursue reconciliation while loving others as ourselves.
Jimmy Santiago Baca sends us on a journey with Sophia, an El Salvadorian mother facing a mountain of obstacles, carrying with her the burden of all that has come before: her husband’s murder, a wrenching separation from her young son at ...