Jimmy Santiago Baca Research Paper

“The person I have become, who sits writing in this chair at this desk, has been forged by enormous struggle and unexpected blessings, despite the dehumanizing environment of a prison intended to destroy me” (5). Jimmy Santiago Baca managed to survive through life’s obstacles, becoming a better person in the end, a person he wouldn’t have been if he hadn 't fought for it. His life started off with a drunken father who would beat them, and soon after a mother who abandoned them. Him and his siblings grew up with their grandparents, hoping for their parents to return for them, until they were sent to an orphanage and eventually gave up hope. Overtime all the family had grown apart, only rarely did his siblings speak to him. Drugs, fights, and

He would help those in jail who were illiterate by writing poems for them, help spread awareness of prison cruelty through his writing, which then helped those in jail have better treatment. Poetry he wrote saved others, and it also saved himself; letting him express himself without judgement and giving him a drive to get a better life. He wrote to relatives, comforting them in their time of grief, which in turn also gave him closure. When his father died he was stopped from going to the funeral, and became angry. He needed a way to vent, to mourn the loss, and he did this through writing. He helped others mourn by writing letters to their relatives, or reading letters for prisoners who were illiterate. “In return for cigarettes and coffee, I’d write chicks for the cons in the dungeon” (). This is because many of them if they could write at all they weren’t good, and they wanted their girlfriends’ to be able to read and enjoy it. It wasn’t an unfair exchange, and Jimmy enjoyed writing poems specially for people. It made him happy and made poetry more enjoyable when he knew someone was going to read it. He helped cons, relatives, and his poems were enjoyed by many of them. It gave him a reason to stay clean, a reason to not just survive but to