Pg. 152-153"Had I been able to share my feelings that moment, I would have said what I was able to add years later, lying on my cot in an isolation cell in total darkness. I would have said I felt the many lives that had come before me, the wind carrying within the vast space of the range, and all that lived in the range--cows, grass, insects-- but something deeper. Old women leaving their windows open so the breeze can pass through the rooms, blessing the walls, chasing away evil spirits, anointing floors, beds, and clothing with it's tepid hand. The breeze excites larks to jackknife over the park pond, knocks on doors to ask people to remember their ancestors, peels paint off trucks and scrapes rust from windmill blades and withers young shoots of alfalfa, cleans what it touches and brings age and emptiness to dirt roads. This breeze blows on my brow sometimes when I'm on the prairie, and I feel immortal; it whispers, Better times will come, and I believe my dreams will come true. The breeze chases the young heels of children and pulls at little girls' ponytails, draws red happiness out from their hears and pools it in their cold cheeks, scruffs youth up, tugs at old women's long-sleeved bereavement dresses, sweeps away veils and handkerchiefs and dries their tears. It roars up from canyons, whistles from caves, blows fountains of green leaves across the air, loosens shale from cliffs, tears cottonwood pods, and bursts them to release fluffy cotton that sails past puffs of chimney smoke. "I felt it all, the magic that Emiliano had urged me to feel and worship, to surrender to. The wild wind tossed itself on top of grass ends and nibbled seeds, danced with dust, took hold of he devil and sung him around a cactus, through sagebrush, to the music of a hundred insect wings vibrating and snakes hissing. It scurried on, laughing a chill down the spines of vaqueros on horseback, making their ponies lay their ears back, attentive to the spirits. It howled and thrashed in arroyos and launched itself in swoops, veering off sides of boulders and loose tin, creeping into the pueblo, scattering its ancient sandy prayers. The wind reclined in flame and swung itself to sleep, played with tumbleweeds, untwined itself like a slow-opening music box, and gave to the naked woman sleeping with her lover a threadbare love song, to the man meditating on life under a tree its lyrical wounds. The wind, the wind, the wind; ruffles curtains with its remorse, flings the child's weeping complaint over post fences, muffles grief in the graying hair of middle-aged women, thuds at back doors and windows, slaps broken lumber against hinges, makes dogs cower behind houses, destroys tender gardens, effaces names on cemetery headstones, and makes my heart ache as blowing sand buries a wedding ring in the field. I felt all my people,felt them deep in the hard work they did, in faint and delicate red-weed prairie flowers, in the arguments over right and wrong, in my people's irascible desire to live, which was mine as well. I felt their will was growing inside me and would ultimately let me be free as the wind."This is one of the best examples of Santiago-Baca's lyrical language and haunting imagery used throughout "A Place to Stand." The story is one that resonates with me as I work in the health and youth development field, often times serving marginalized populations including foster youth, youth in juvenile hall, and immigrant youth. It was just so heartbreaking to listen to a story of oppression and heartbreak that was only made tolerable by the triumphant ending and continuous amazement at his ability to capture his experiences with the written word. "Attempts at placing me in a foster home have failed. When prospective parents come, my brother and I are never chosen. Our hair, our color, our speech--everything is wrong about us. She asks me how I feel and other personal questions, and I respond with shrugs, not really caring about anything. I already know what I'm going to do. That night I sneak out of my dorm and meet my brother by the fence. He promises he'll follow me as I take off down the ditch under the stars, crossing the alfalfa fields until I stop at the place we're supposed to meet. He never comes. Later the cops arrest me for running away. After several runaways I'm finally taken to the Detention Center for Boys and put behind bars. In the end, as always, a cell is the only place they have for kids without families"P. 174 "I knew almost nothing about my culture and I was surprised by the extent of his knowledge. From history to language to politics, he had opinions on everything, and when he spoke he did so with a flair-- his expression intense, his words passionate, his hands pointing or pounding or waving with conviction. He told me one day that to outsiders his tattoos symbolized criminality and rebellion. But it was not so, he said. "I wear my culture on my skin. They want to make me forget who I am, the beauty of my people and my heritage, but to do it they got to peel my skin off. And if they ever do that, they'll kill me doing it-- and that's good, because once they make you forget the language and history, they've killed you anyway. I'm alive and free, no matter how many bars they put me behind."P.223-224
The memoir by Baca "A Place to Stand" was a light read about a young boy who grows up in correctional behavior institutions for the unjust reasons and ends up in numerous bad situations. It really makes you wonder if these correction reform system are really creating results.Bacca was born into a low income family in estancia. He lived with his mother and father who was an alcoholic as well as his two older sibling: his older sister and Mieyo, his older brother. After series of events his mother abandons her children to live with a rich Anglo American. His father goes on a rage and starts drinking more than ever, with the inability of their father to take care of them they get sent to their grandparents house and after that they get sent separated in orphanages. After many attempts to escape sabacca gets sent to a correctional system. He then spent his whole life in and out of jail. I think that a little kid being out in a graphic place such as jail was the first wrong step of the correctional system. He ha to fight in there to survive which led to even more time. He was put through a lot and never seemed to find a proper outlet. He met good people and bad people but thy came and went, there weren't any plot twist in this story line but I loved the way it was written.The way it was written had a big impact. He first described being a young kid full of innocence. He described a scary experience he had while visiting his dad in jail. How sorry he felt and then towards the end when he is put in jail he feels like a failure to end up in his dad's shoes.The theme I say would be that even after you've been done wrong or maye have been in the wrong place in the wrong time, you'll have to pay for it but you can always try to make the best out of it like sabacca did, he manage to get an education in his time spent in jail.
Do You like book A Place To Stand (2002)?
This book is amazing in so many ways, I doubt I can cover all of them. By the end it reminded me of Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I didn't know why I was making that connection as I read, then I realized that both men were thrown into the worst possible circumstances of violence, constant threat, and the most challenging test of character. For Frankl it was a Nazi concentration camp, for Santiago Baca it was prison. Amazingly, not only do they survive but the person they become through the ordeal is a wise and refined form of their former self. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is grueling at times. In fact, the only thing that kept me reading was the fact that I knew the ending. I knew I was reading an amazing piece of work written by the real life protagonist who somehow rose above the racism, ignorance, and brutality of this true to life story. He's brilliant (in every meaning of the word).
—Adriana Diaz
In A Place to Stand Jimmy Santiago Baca chronicles a life begun with an acute awareness of lack, plummeting into a world of punishment for a life he didn’t know better than to lead. I’m both heartbroken and uplifted by Baca’s story. I found myself wanting at some times to comfort him and tell him that there is more to life than he realizes, while other times I wanted to smack him for making what he knew in his heart to be clearly wrong decisions. In his early days gallivanting with Marcos and falling in love with Lonnie I had a sense that Baca could pull his life together and that he would find a clean escape from the world of drugs and dealing he had been drawn into. I believe he lost the battle in the moment he sat in the car with the nine millimeter and a marijuana stalk between him and the enemy. All of a sudden his life was changed for good and he was drawn into a violent world with no escape. While in prison Baca undergoes many transformations. He finds himself at different times a violent criminal, a lost and desperate man in the insane ward, and a dedicated student. It is within this time that I am overcome with sadness for his predicament. In many ways I see why he is in prison and agree that he made many terrible mistakes along the way, yet here is a man with a clear longing to make things right. It is in his search for education that I see true hope. Baca finds his way within the pages of letters and finds his voice in learning to read and write. All of a sudden he has an outlet for his anger, frustration, humiliation, and sadness. This part of Baca’s story uplifts me and brings me great joy. I identify with the need to write out my emotion and am thankful that Baca found the strength to learn what he needed to be successful.In the end Baca comes out on top, building a life for himself. Even in the face of endless tragedy that befalls his family after his release from prison, Baca is able to find comfort in his writing. I’m touched by the sentiment and clear understanding of human nature that flows from Baca’s writing. What results is an incredibly eloquent, beautifully written memoir of his journey.
—Riki
A Place to Stand, was written by Jimmy Santiago Baca, a Chicano writer introduced to me for first time in the English class I am taking at the City College of San Francisco. A Place to Stand is an autobiography that details the struggles Baca had to face in order to become a famous writer. But his struggles are not like the ones any writer has to confront… Baca was the product of a mixed family in which he couldn’t fit. The book takes us to his childhood in his hometown in New Mexico, growing up in a chaotic family and his experiences as an abandoned teenager…. In the book, Baca also takes us to a recurrent place: jail. I am not spoiling the book if I tell you this (I am sure if you Google Jimmy Santiago Baca this will be the first thing that you’ll find) but the most memorable part of the book is when he shows us how learning to read and write while he was in jail saved him from a certain spiritual death. With the most beautiful, strong and poetic language, Jimmy Santiago Baca tells us the story of all the people who faces difficult times in order to find their place in the world. A Place to Stand is the journey of a Chicano kid trying to understand the troubles of a dysfunctional family, a Chicano teenager running away from what he didn’t understand, a Chicano man finding his true identity. It’s the journey of a man who can’t fit in a society, a man without a family, without education, a man searching for himself in the darkest places. And it’s exactly in the darkness where Baca finds the spark that will lighten his road to salvation.
—Ada Restrepo
