Jimmy Santiago Baca

Lacey J. Kogelnik
English 6923: Working Class Literature
Fall 2003

Introduction

Born in Sante Fe, New Mexico in 1952, Jimmy Santiago Baca lived in a two-room shack with his alcoholic father, his mother, and his brother and sister. When he was two years old, Baca’s parents abandoned him and he and his siblings moved into their grandparent’s shack. Baca eventually moved into an orphanage and later, a detention center. Finally—when Baca was only 15 years old—he graduated to living on the streets. When Baca was 21, he was sentenced to five to ten years in a maximum-security prison in Arizona for dealing drugs. In prison, Baca taught himself how to read and write and developed a passion for writing poetry. Baca, who corresponded with several established poets while he was in prison, first published his poetry while he was still incarcerated. After he wsa released, he publishing his first major collection of poetry, Immigrants in Our Own Land, which is based on his prison experience. Since then Baca has released several other books of poetry, a collection of essays and stories, screenplays, and a memoir. Additionally, Baca conducts writing workshops at numerous schools and correctional facilities across the county. In 2003, Baca received his PhD in Literature from New Mexico University.

Discussion of Author's Work

Although Jimmy Santiago Baca’s writing is influenced by his time spent in prison, his cultural background also shapes his poetry. Self described as Chicano—Baca’s parents were Spanish and Native American—Baca’s writing reflects the honesty of life on the barrio. Baca believes one of his responsibilities as a writer is to, "to remain true to my reality so I may honor my people and pay full homage to their spirit." (online interview John Keene). In his poetry, Baca honors his Chicano heritage by giving the community a voice in his writing. Baca feels his writing is different from academic writing about the barrio because scholars tend to leave the Chicano people out of their studies and only focus on the "ideas and traditions and folklore and ritual" (online interview with Gabriel Meléndez) of the community.

Nine years after publishing Immigrants in Our Own Land, Baca published Martin and Meditations on the South Valley, a semi autobiographical collection of poetry that won an American Book Award in 1988. Baca, who believes the Chicano community is portrayed as “renegade apaches, wanting to burn buildings down,”(online interview John Keene) wrote Martin and Mediations on the South Valley in order to portray a honest image of his people—one that shows the compassionate and loving side of the Chicano community. In his follow up book of poetry, Black Mesa Poems, Baca’s individual poems capture different (but still authentic) aspects of Chicano life, from family to community to the New Mexico landscape to work. In the busyness of life—working in the fields in order to provide for family—Baca illustrates a culture that tends to forget its identity because of the necessity and struggle to survive. His poetry also looks at life on the barrio from an outsider’s perspective. Baca’s poems consider those who don’t understand the Chicano work ethic and the unfairness of the American Dream. In Black Mesa Poems, he includes a poem called, which illustrates this perspective:

 

Too Much of a Good Thing
Snow’s been melting too soon--
passing the Rio Grande every day, I note
water level is high,
all following down the river
What happens
when I need to irrigate pastures
in summer
and there is no water
Farmers get edgy
Start cursing neighbors under their breath
for using too much water
Crops stunted,
only one alfalfa cutting
instead of three,
no feed for cows,
no money to buy feed…
and like it happened a few years ago,
Mr. Gonzales goes out
and you hear rifle shots blister
cold morning air
and you his cattle
are falling in the snow dead.
At Coronado Center, biggest shopping mall
in New Mexico, I hear two suntanned ladies
praising our wonderful weather. I give them
a glance, throw my gloves
on the counter for the cashier, and wonder what
a farmer’s wife would tell them. (27)

The themes in Baca’s poetry about the Chicano community are also similar to the themes in his poetry about prison life. When Baca first learned to read and write, he wrote poems about incarceration and shared them with the other convicts. These poems, like his later published poems, also gave a voice to another group of powerless people—Baca’s fellow inmates. Baca says that when he read his poetry to the inmates, “there was a sense of awe, my awe, their awe, and at the same time a sense of vulnerability, of my, our vulnerability. In other words, language had such a tremendous power…” (online interview with John Keene). For example, after a riot and indefinite lockdown on Baca's cell block, he wrote a poem about "legislators coming through the block" (Baca 231) and shared it with his fellow inmates:

 

The Only Came to See the Zoo
Our muscles warped and scarr'd
Wrap around our skeletons
Like hot winds
That sweep the desert floor
In search of shade,
Sleeping each night
In the hollow of petrified
Skulls.
And from our mouths
Words of love would come
If we let them,
Like molten stones shrieking
From the belly of a volcano
But standing at these bars
We watched you leave
And only wondered...
You looked up at us with passion
As we stood at the bars.
A vacuum swelled at our hands
Went pale, our fingers cold
The gray pity of our lot
Made you turn away
But our spirits met that moment
Faraway in the land of Justice
And we whispered with our eyes,
”Come closer”
But you did not.
It’s been so long now
Since you left.
Did you tell them?
Hell is not a dream
And that you’ve been there?
Did you tell them (published in A Place to Stand, 232)

Through Baca’s writing, he communicated the collective experiences of the inmates. And because most inmates, like Baca, were from uneducated, working-poor families and most were illiterate, the ability to be “heard” was extremely valuable. In both his Chicano culture and the prison culture, the people in the communities were not able to speak out, but Baca continues to use his writing to as an outlet for sharing the unfairness and the victories within these communities.

Annotated Bibliography

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. A Place to Stand. New York: Grove Press, 2001.
----- Jimmy Santiago Baca's memoir.

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Black Mesa Poems. New York: New Directions, 1989.
-----A collection of poetry about the Chicano culture and the New Mexico landscape.

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Interview. "Carrying the Magic of His Peoples Heart," by Gabriel Melendez. Orginally published in Las Americas Journal. Available Online: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baca/melendez.html @ the Modern American Poetry website.
-----A interview about Baca's writing, his life and the public's response to his poetry.

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Interview. "Poetry Is What We Speak to Each Other, " by John Keene.
Originally published in Callaloo--A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, 17:1. (1994).

Available online

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baca/interview.htm @ the Modern American Poetry website.
-----A interview about Baca's life and writing

Works by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Poetry

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Black Mesa Poems. New York: New Directions, 1989.

-----C-train (Dream Boy's story) and thirteen Mexicans: Poems. New York : Grove Press, 2002

-----Healing Earthquakes: A Love Story in Poems. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

-----Heat: Steelworker Lives and Legends. Mena: Cedar Hill Publications, 2001.

-----Immigrants in Our Own Land & Selected Early Poems. New York: New Directions, 1990.

-----Set This Book on Fire. Mena: Cedar Hill Publications, 2001.

-----What's Happening? Willimantic : Curbstone Press, 1982.

Books

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. A Place to Stand. New York: Grove Press, 2001. (memoir)

-----The Importance of a Piece of Paper: Stories. New York: Grove Press, 2004.

-----Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio. Sante Fe: Red Crane Books, 1992. (essays)

Films/Plays

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Bound by Honor. Dir. Taylor Hackford. Disney Productions, Hollywood Pictures, 1993.

-----The Lone Wolf: The Story of Pancho Gonzalez. HBO Productions, 2000

-----Los tres hijos de Julia, 1991. (play)

Works about Jimmy Santiago Baca

See Resources, listed below.

Resources

The official Jimmy Santiago Baca website. Includes biography, poems, community forum, monthly column and more.

General information, interviews and links to poems compiled and prepared by Cary Nelson on the Modern American Poetry website.

Student webpage about Jimmy Santiago Baca created by Erin Dodson for the Southwest Literature class at New Mexico State University.

Interview from The Progressive by Barbara Stahura, January 2003.