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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. Now an internationally acclaimed writer and winner of the Pushcart Prize and American Book Award, Baca describes the extreme measures he took to survive on the street and in prison and how poetry became an essential element of his newfound sense of self.
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 sent to serve five to ten years in a maximum-security penitentiary.
What stands between us and authoritarianism seems increasingly fragile. Democratic practices are under attack by foreign intrusion into elections; voter suppression restricts citizen participation. Nations are turning to autocratic leaders in the face of rapid social change. Democratic values and open society can only be preserved if citizens can discover and claim their voices. We access society through our organisations, yet the collective voices and irrationalities of these organisations do not currently offer clear pathways for individuals to locate themselves. How can we move through the mounting chaos of our social systems, through our multiple roles in groups and institutions, to find a voice that matters? What kind of perspective will allow institutional leaders to facilitate the discovery of active citizenship and support engagement? 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. With detailed stories, the steps - and the conscious and unconscious linkages - from being a family member, to entering outside groups, to taking up and making sense of institutional roles, illuminate the process of claiming the citizen role. With the help of leaders who recognise and utilise the dynamics of social systems, there may be hope for us as citizens to use our institutional experiences to discover a place to stand.
New entry in the Leaders In Action Series. Offers a spiritual biography of Martin Luther.
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 vocation as a poet.
“This fiery retrospective collection” of poetry by the acclaimed Chicano-American author of A Place to Stand is “warm and furious...righteous and prayerful” (Booklist). Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca is lauded for his talent in weaving personal and political threads to create a pertinent and poignant narrative. He addresses universal issues with passion, grace, and vivid sensory detail. Singing at the Gates is a collection of Baca’s work stretching across four decades—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. A career-spanning selection, it includes poems drawn from Baca’s first chapbook, letters he wrote from prison to a woman named Mariposa, and recent meditations on the significance of breaking through oppression. “A poet whose voice, brutal and tender, is unique in America.”—The Nation
A collection of poems that grows out of the American Southwest focusing on family and community life of the barrio sharing births and deaths, neighbors and seasons, and injustices and victories.
Fiercely moving, the two long narrative poems of Martín & Meditations on the South Valley revolve around the semi-autobiographical figure of Martin, a mestizo or "detribalized Apache." Fiercely moving, the two long narrative poems of Martín & Meditations on the South Valley revolve around the semi-autobiographical figure of Martin, a mestizo or "detribalized Apache." Abandoned as a child and a long time on the hard path to building his own family, Martin at last finds his home in the stubborn and beautiful world of the barrio. Jimmy Santiago Baca "writes with unconcealed passion," Denise Levertov states in her introduction, “but he is far from being a naive realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way in which it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events."
Originally published: New York: Summit Books, 1984.