Jimmy Santiago Baca
Poet, Memoirist & Novelist
Author of A Place to Stand
“Baca writes with unconcealed passion . . . and manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythical and archetypal significance of life events.” —Denise Levertov
"Raw and ambitious, [Baca's work is] notable for addressing important issues...and depicting marginalized communities and individuals who struggle to retain meaning and purpose in a harsh, unjust world." —San Francisco Chronicle
“I don't know if I would have lived had I not found poetry.” —Jimmy Santiago Baca
Born in New Mexico of Chicano and Apache descent, Jimmy Santiago Baca was raised first by his grandmother and was later sent to an orphanage. A runaway at age thirteen, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison at the age of twenty-one that he began to turn his life around: there he learned to read and write and found his passion for poetry. During a fateful conflict with another inmate, Jimmy was shaken by the voices of Neruda and Lorca, and made a choice that would alter his destiny. Baca sent three of his poems to Denise Levertov, the poetry editor of Mother Jones. The poems were published and became part of Immigrants in Our Own Land, published in 1979, the year he was released from prison. He earned his GED later that same year. Like many Southwestern writers, Baca identifies with the land around him and the myths that are part of his culture. He is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award, the National Poetry Award, two Southwest Book Awards, and the International Hispanic Heritage Award.
His memoir, A Place To Stand, won the prestigious International Award and tells of his life in prison, where he discovered the power of language. The memoir is being made into a documentary feature film—examining Jimmy’s growth from illiterate convict to award-winning poet, the film will demonstrate that there is always hope to change one’s life. He is at work on his second memoir, The Fisher King. He is the author of a collection of stories The Importance of a Piece of Paper and a novel, A Glass of Water (2009), both published by Grove/Atlantic. A Glass of Water was released to critical acclaim and is a gripping tale of family, loyalty, ambition, and revenge, which offers us a glimpse into the tragedies unfurling at this very moment at and around our country's borders.
A Place To Stand film trailer and preview
A Conversation about A Glass of Water
Baca's books of poetry include: The Esai Poems, the first of four books under the series title Breaking Bread with the Darkness; Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (New Directions); Healing Earthquakes; C-Train & Thirteen Mexicans; Black Mesa Poems; Martin & Meditations on the South Valley, for which he won The American Book Award; and Immigrants in Our Own Land. His poems reveal an honest, passionate voice and powerful imagery full of the dark jewels of the American Southwest landscape (llanos, mesas, and chiles) and the chaotic urban landscape (nightclubs, rusty motors, and bricks) woven into a rich lyricism sprinkled with Spanish. His themes include the American Southwest, addiction, injustice, education, community, love and beyond.
Baca has devoted his post-prison life to writing and teaching others who are overcoming hardship. To that end, he published a guidebook for teachers entitled Adolescents On The Edge, co-authored with ReLeah Cosset Lent, to offer a completely new approach to teaching at risk adolescents (Heinemann, 2011). He has conducted hundreds of writing workshops in prisons, community centers, libraries, and universities throughout the country. He is also producing a two hour documentary about the power of literature and how it can change lives.
Video overview of Adolescents on the Edge
Movie scripts and productions include Bound by Honor (Blood In, Blood Out), Hollywood Pictures/Disney, and The Lone Wolf—The Story of Pancho Gonzalez, HBO Productions.In addition to traditional poetry readings, Jimmy Santiago Baca is available to read in community centers, high schools, and/or prisons. He will also lead writing workshops for twenty to thirty people.
In 2005 he created Cedar Tree Inc., a nonprofit foundation that works to give people of all walks of life the opportunity to become educated and improve their lives. Cedar Tree provides free instruction, books, writing material and scholarships. Cedar Tree has an ongoing writing workshop in the Albuquerque Women’s Prison and at the South Valley Community Center. Cedar Tree also has an Internship program that provides live-in writing scholarships at Wind River Ranch, and in the south valley of Albuquerque. The program allows students, writers and poets the opportunity to write, attend poetry readings, conduct writing workshops, and work on documentary film production.
About ADOLESCENTS ON THE EDGE: STORIES AND LESSONS TO TRANSFORM LEARNING (2010)
“Literacy is freedom and everyone has something significant to say.”
—Jimmy Santiago Baca
Fusing Jimmy Santiago Baca’s talents as a writer of memoir with ReLeah Cossett Lent’s expertise in building and empowering classroom communities, Adolescents on the Edge offers a completely new approach to reaching at-risk adolescents. Centered around conflicts and life-altering choices, Baca’s gripping personal narratives—delivered through short stories and live-from-the-classroom videos—will resonate with students and provide rich opportunities for them to reflect on their own decision making. Through these stories and their accompanying activities, students witness the power of literacy and learn that their power, too, lives in the words they speak, write, and share with others.
About A GLASS OF WATER (2009)
"This book is the best antidote around to the sorrowful, dehumanizing discourse on undocumented immigrants going on in Washington." —Ilan Stavans
A Glass of Water is a gripping tale of family, loyalty, ambition, and revenge, which offers us a glimpse into the tragedies unfurling at this very moment at and around our country's borders. The promise of a new beginning brings Casimiro and Nopal together when they are young immigrants, having made the nearly deadly journey across the border from Mexico. They settle into a life of long days in the chili fields, and in a few years their happy union yields two sons, Lorenzo and Vito. But when Nopal is brutally murdered, the boys are left to navigate life in this brave but capricious new world without her. Lorenzo follows in his father's footsteps, devoting himself to the land, and falling in love with a beautiful, idealistic student who comes to the migrant camp to study and improve the lives of its workers. Vito, hot-blooded and restless, breaks away and soon finds fame as an itinerant boxer, gaining notoriety in the ring and out. The brothers' journeys will eventually converge and bring them face to face with a common enemy. A Glass of Water is a searing, heartfelt tribute to brotherhood, and an arresting portrait of the twisted paths people take to claim their piece of the ever-elusive American dream.
About A PLACE TO STAND (2002)
Poetry seems antithetical to the poverty, racism, and violence that wracked Baca's tragic youth, but the power of language is what kept him alive and sane while he served hard time in a hellish federal prison. Baca, born in New Mexico in 1952, was abandoned by his parents and put in an orphanage at age seven. He learned to fight but not to read and, in spite of good intentions, ran into nothing but trouble. Baca chronicles his brutal experiences with riveting exactitude and remarkable evenhandedness. An unwilling participant in the horrific warfare that rages within prison walls and a rebel who refused to be broken by a vicious and corrupt system, Baca taught himself to read and write, awoke to the voice of the soul, and converted "doing time" into a profoundly spiritual pursuit. Poetry became a lifeline, and Baca's harrowing story will stand among the world's most moving testimonies to the profound value of literature. — Donna Seaman, Booklist
