Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Self Revelation Through Poetry A man with nothing to lose could be considered more dangerous than a man with everything to gain. The back and forth, up and down, side to side story of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s life shows that a man fighting for survival yearns more than a man fighting for simple possessions. Prison takes a toll on people differently, but those people have to accept the fact that jail is now their home for the time being. Some may continue along the beaten path, consuming themselves with regret, anger, or denial; but, some may seek a smoother path, digging deep and figuring out how to modify their lives for the better. It is evident that in his memoir, A Place to Stand, Jimmy Santiago Baca sought out this …show more content…
What separates the weak between the tough is how each con decides to spend their time in jail, and who they are when they come out. In Baca’s case, he went in as a juvenile delinquent but came out a grown intelligent man. Why? The answer is solely because he decided to defer his mind and ways to something productive and reflect on his past. “So very few make it out of here as human as they came in, they leave wondering what good they are now, as they look at their hands so long away from their tools, as they look at themselves, so long gone from their families, so long gone from life itself, so many things have changed.” (“Immigrants in Our”). Although Jimmy didn’t have much of a family to come home to, he defined the word changed. The truth is that in Baca’s case, he could have easily went into jail and stay in a negative phase of his life, but he decided to change for the better and come out reborn.
Overall, the moral of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s story, his life, his themes, his beliefs, all combined to equal a man that has literally been through hell and back. Something as simple as a pen or pencil served as a ladder that brought him up from rock bottom to back onto his feet. Poetry became the key to Jimmy’s success and the key to his