Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend time behind bars in a maximum security prison? Award winning poet and writer Jimmy Santiago Baca knows exactly what it is like to be in prison. A Place to Stand is Baca's memoir of his troubled early life, subsequent incarceration in prison at the age of 21 for selling drugs and how he turned his life around and be came an award winning poet and writer.
Baca's early life in New Mexico was not easy and unquestionably violent. Abandoned by everyone he entered the legal system as an "orphan" and then as a juvenile deliquent. However, the system failed Baca and when he entered prison at the age of 21 he was illiterate and now at the mercy of the prison system and its gangs and violence.
When Baca emerges from prison in his late 20's after many stints in solitary where he discovered within himself a love of his Chicano heritage and a desire to write; Baca has taught himself to read and write and has embarked on what turns out to be a successful career as a poet with the help of pen pals he had corresponded with while is was in prison.
Don't overlook A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Well written and engaging Baca's story of survival and self-discovery in the most adverse and violent circumstances will astound and amaze even the most cynical readers.