Jimmy Santiago Baca | |
|---|---|
 Baca during the videotaping of Add-Verse, 2004 | |
| Born | January 2, 1952 Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Notable works | Martin and Meditations on the South Valley |
| Notable awards | American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, International Hispanic Heritage Award, International Award. |
| Spouse | Married |
| Website | |
| www | |
Jimmy Santiago Baca (born January 2, 1952) is an American poet, memoirist, and screenwriter from New Mexico. [1] [2]
Baca was born in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, in 1952. Abandoned by his parents at the age of two, he lived with one of his grandmothers for several years before being placed in an orphanage. At the age of 13 he ran away and wound up living on the streets. When he was 21, he was convicted on charges of drug possession and incarcerated. He served five years in prison, [3] three of them in isolation, and having expressed a desire to go to school (the guards considered this dangerous), he was put in the same area of the prison with the inmates on death row for a period of time before he was released. [4]
During this time, Baca taught himself to read and write, and he began to compose poetry. He wrote an essay called "Coming Into Language," which is about his upbringing and the challenges he had to face. Baca wrote this piece in the order of his life from the start to the end. He talked about his struggles in prison and how he took a book and started to teach himself the beauty of literature. He discovered a way to express himself which is the beauty of it all. He sold these poems to fellow inmates in exchange for cigarettes. A fellow inmate convinced him to submit some of his poems to the magazine Mother Jones , then edited by Denise Levertov. Levertov printed Baca's poems and began corresponding with him, eventually finding a publisher for his first book. [5]
Immigrants in Our Own Land, Baca's first major collection, was published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1979. [6] This early collection included "I Am Offering This Poem," [7] a poem later reprinted in 1990's Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems [8] and anthologized in The Seagull Book of Poems [9] . In 1987, his semi-autobiographical minor epic in verse, Martin & Meditations on the South Valley , received the American Book Award for poetry, bringing Baca international acclaim and, in 1989, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature. [10]
In 2004 Baca started a non-profit organization, Cedar Tree, Inc., that supports literary workshops for inmates and troubled youth, through charitable donations. As well as writing workshops, Cedar Tree has produced two documentary films Clamor en Chino and Moving the River Back Home. The organization employs ex-offenders as interns. [11]
Baca's poetry collections include C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans: Dream Boy's Story (Grove Press, 2002), Healing Earthquakes (2001), Set This Book on Fire (1999), In the Way of the Sun (1997), Black Mesa Poems (1995), Poems Taken from My Yard (1986), and What's Happening (1982). His "memoir", A Place to Stand (2001), chronicles his troubled youth and the five-year jail-stint that brought about his personal transformation. The poet Will Inman published Mr. Baca's poetry in his 1977 anthology Fired Up with You: Poems of a Niagara Vision (Border Press), one of the earliest anthologies to include Jimmy Santiago Baca's poems. Baca is also the author of a collection of stories and essays, Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio (1992); a play, Los tres hijos de Julia (1991); a screenplay, Bound by Honor , which was released by Hollywood Pictures as Blood In Blood Out in 1993; he also published at the end of 1993 Second Chances. Baca's most recent novel is A Glass of Water (2009). He published an original essay in 2013 called, "The Face," in ebook form with Restless Books, [12] along with digital editions of his Breaking Bread with the Darkness poetry volumes. [13] [14] [15]
https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mmartin-rodriguez/index_files/vhBacaJimmy.htm
Santiago Baca wrote the screenplay for a Hollywood production, Blood In Blood Out . Baca also appeared as an actor in the film and as one of its producers. [16]
A film based on Baca's memoir A Place to Stand, directed by Daniel Glick, was released in 2014. [17] The film was produced by Gabriel Baca, David Gruban, and Andres Salazar [18] The creators of the movie also made a school curriculum to strengthen and highlight the morals within Baca's life story, containing a workbook and films.
In 2003, Baca appeared in an episode of Def Poetry Jam .
Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean physicist and poet. He has been considered one of the most influential Spanish-language Chilean poets of the 20th century.
Gary Anthony Soto is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.
Priscilla Denise Levertov was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her poetry book The Freeing of the Dust. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Richard Hugo, born Richard Franklin Hogan, was an American poet. Although some critics regard Hugo as primarily a regionalist, his work resonates broadly across place and time. A portion of Hugo's work reflects the economic depression of the Northwestern United States, particularly Montana.
Blood In Blood Out is a 1993 American epic crime drama film directed by Taylor Hackford that has become a cult classic film among the Mexican-American community. It follows the intertwining lives of three Chicano relatives from 1972 to 1984. They start out as members of a street gang in East Los Angeles, and as dramatic incidents occur, their lives and friendships are forever changed. Blood In Blood Out was filmed in 1991 throughout Los Angeles and inside California's San Quentin State Prison.
Michael Andre is a Canadian, disc jockey, poet, critic and editor living in New York City.
Latin American poetry is the poetry written by Latin American authors. Latin American poetry is often written in Spanish, but is also composed in Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, English, and Spanglish. The unification of Indigenous and imperial cultures produced a unique and extraordinary body of literature in this region. Later with the introduction of African slaves to the new world, African traditions greatly influenced Latin American poetry. Many great works of poetry were written in the colonial and pre-colonial time periods, but it was in the 1960s that the world began to notice the poetry of Latin America. Through the modernismo movement, and the international success of Latin American authors, poetry from this region became increasingly influential.
Latino poetry is a branch of American poetry written by poets born or living in the United States who are of Latin American origin or descent and whose roots are tied to the Americas and their languages, cultures, and geography.
Mark Pawlak is a Polish-American poet and educator.
JesúsAbraham "Tato" Laviera was a Puerto Rican poet in the United States. Born Jesús Laviera Sanches, in Santurce, Puerto Rico, he moved to New York City at the age of ten, with his family, to reside in the Lower East Side. Throughout his life he was involved in various human rights organizations, but was best known as a renowned Nuyorican poet. An obituary for NBC Latino describes him as "one of the greatest representatives of the Nuyorican movement."
Richard Shelton was an American writer, poet and emeritus Regents Professor of English at the University of Arizona.
Thomas Centolella is an American poet and educator. He has published four books of poetry and has had many poems published in periodicals including American Poetry Review. He has received awards for his poetry including those from the National Poetry Series, the American Book Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and the Dorset Prize. In 2019, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
American literature in Spanish in the United States dates back as 1610 when the Spanish explorer Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published his epic poem Historia de Nuevo México. He was an early chronicler of the conquest of the Americas and a forerunner of Spanish-language literature in the United States given his focus on the American landscape and the customs of the people. However, it was not until the late 20th century that Spanish language literature written by Americans was regularly published in the United States.
Vince Gotera is an American poet and writer, best known as Editor of the North American Review. In 1996, Nick Carbó called him a "leading Filipino-American poet of this generation"; later, in 2004, Carbó described him as "one of the leading Asian American poets ... willing to take a stance against American imperialism."
Francisco Xavier Alarcón was a Chicano poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish" within the United States. His poems have been also translated into Irish and Swedish. He made many guest appearances at public schools so that he could help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry especially because he felt that children are "natural poets."
Martín & Meditations on the South Valley is a semiautobiographical poetry collection or "novel in verse" written by Jimmy Santiago Baca and published in 1987. Contents of the book include an introduction by Denise Levertov,, Martín, an epic poem in nine parts, Meditations on the South Valley, a continuation of Martín in twenty-eight parts, and two glossaries of Spanish words, phrases, and references in English.
Latino literature is literature written by people of Latin American ancestry, often but not always in English, most notably by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans, many of whom were born in the United States. The origin of the term "Latino literature" dates back to the 1960s, during the Chicano Movement, which was a social and political movement by Mexican Americans seeking equal rights and representation. At the time, the term "Chicano literature" was used to describe the work of Mexican-American writers. As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
Feminist poetry is inspired by, promotes, or elaborates on feminist principles and ideas. It might be written with the conscious aim of expressing feminist principles, although sometimes it is identified as feminist by critics in a later era. Some writers are thought to express feminist ideas even if the writer was not an active member of the political movement during their era. Many feminist movements, however, have embraced poetry as a vehicle for communicating with public audiences through anthologies, poetry collections, and public readings.
"I Am Offering This Poem" is a poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca, first published in Immigrants in Our Own Land (1979). It was reprinted in 1990 in the collection Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems. Baca’s diction and imagery convey a central theme of the work- the importance of poetry and art in general.
Pinto or Pinta is a member of a Chicano subculture of people who are or have been incarcerated. It is an in-group moniker used to distinguish oneself from the general prison population or from "model inmates." It is a term which embraces the oppositional elements of being a Convicto. The term came from a bilingual play on the Spanish word for penitencia (penitence), since pintos and pintas are people who have spent time in penitentiaries. The term has also been traced to the Spanish word Pintao.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
