Praise for A Place to Stand:
A Place to Stand is about place in the largest, most flexible sense of the term: as home, but also as the soil of ones roots and as the literary pantheon into which one fits. In that sense the book belongs to the subgenre of prison tales for which the twentieth century was fertile ground... from The Autobiography of Malcolm X to Vaclav Havels diaries... [Baca is a poet who] travels outward and inward as a Chicano in America, with all the complications that the identity entails... a poet in control of his craft... whose voice, brutal yet tender, is unique in America... one worth paying attention to. [A Place to Stand] is a luminous book that is at once brave and heartbreaking... a thunderous artifact.
The Nation
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 Bacas harrowing story will stand among the worlds most moving testimonies to the profound value of literature.
Booklist
As brawny and brilliant as its author, A Place to Stand is a triumph.
Tucson Weekly
A Place to Stand is an astonishing narrative that affirms the triumph of the human spirit and for that reason alone it is an important story . Executed in broad strokes and startling colors... [Bacas memoir] is destined to become a benchmark of Southwestern prose.
Arizona Daily Star
A family history, a personal voyage and a searing critique of Americas penal system, A Place to Stand is one of the most gripping memoirs in recent memory.
Alibi
Baca enters [prison] rootless and illiterate, a child of abject poverty in southern New Mexico, having lived through an inexorable path of loss, abandonment, and violence. How he survived and became an internationally regarded poet and social activist is a gritty story unflinchingly told in A Place to Stand.
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Poet Bacas unflinching account of his incarceration, with its brutality and occasional benevolence, reveals the paradox of prison life. Ironically, his time in solitary confinement redeemed him, prompting lifesaving memories of his rural New Mexico childhood, which ignited his ability to use language to elevate himself above his immediate surroundings. The rustic imagery is beautiful, but beautiful too is the suns path down the dark prison corridor.... [A Place to Stand] is worth reading from both a literary and social perspective.
Library Journal
A PLACE TO STAND
PREVIOUS WORKS BY THE AUTHOR:
Black Mesa Poems
Martin & Meditations on the South Valley
Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems
Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio
A PLACE TO STAND
The Making of a Poet
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Copyright 2001 Jimmy Santiago Baca
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
Special thanks go to Anton Mueller for his effort in making this book a reality.
Names have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 1952
A place to stand: the making of a poet / Jimmy Santiago Baca.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-8021-3908-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-3908-5
1. Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 1952 2. Poets, American20th centuryBiography. 3. Ex-convictsUnited StatesBiography. 4. Solitary confinementUnited States. 5. Mexican American poetsBiography. 6. PrisonsUnited States. I. Title.
PS3552.A254 Z473 2001
811.54dc21
[B]
00-051400
DESIGN BY LAURA HAMMOND HOUGH
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com
09 10 11 12 15 14 13 12 11
PROLOGUE
I was five years old the first time I ever set foot in prison. A policeman came to the door one night and told Mom she was needed at jail. She took me with her. When we arrived at the booking desk the captain asked, You married to Damacio Baca?
Yes.
He was arrested for drunk driving. His bails a hundred. Sign here and make sure he appears for court.
What are they?
His release papers.
The captain studied her hesitation.
He stays till his appearance then. The captain shrugged, surprised at her, and led us past holding cells to the drunk tank.
It smelled like urine and whiskey vomit. I held tightly to Mothers hand. The corridors were dark and gloomy, and the slightest sound echoed ominously in the hall. We stopped in front of a cell where men sat and stared at the wall in front of them. Some were crumpled on the floor where they had passed out.
Oye, Damacio, despierta! the captain cried, and banged the bars with his baton.
The inmates glanced at us with hung-over disinterest, and one shook my father awake. He rose in a groggy stupor. Cautiously stepping over bodies, losing and regaining his footing, he approached the bars. He rubbed his face and blinked his red eyes.
Did you have to bring him? he asked accusingly. Then he added, clearly hurt that I was there, I dont want him seeing me like this. Get me out of here.
No, Mom said.
He stared at her. Listen, you, dont Shaking with rage, he looked at me and made an effort to control himself.
We stood in silence for a few seconds. Then Mom cried, Stay away from us!
He reached his hand through the bars to me but Mom yanked me away, her hand painfully gripping mine. I wanted to tell her not to leave Father in there. I feared he might be hurt or be swallowed up by the darkness, and we would never see him again. The green painted bars, the guards with guns and keys and surly attitudes, the caked grime on the walls and floor, the unshaven men with no teeth and swollen red eyes and scratched facesthese filled me with terror. I tried to free my hand from Mothers to go back to him, but she squeezed harder and dragged me along.
