Literature
Jimmy Santiago Baca, the 1989 Hispanic Heritage Award Honoree for Literature, unearthed a voracious passion for writing while serving time in a maximum security prison.
He has devoted his post-prison life to sharing his experience and teaching his craft to others who are overcoming hardship.
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.
He wound up living on the streets, and at the age of 21 he was convicted on charges of drug possession and incarcerated.
He served six and a half years in prison, three of them in isolation, and having expressed a desire to go to school (the guards considered this dangerous), he was, for a time, put in the same area of the prison with the inmates on death row before he was released.
While in jail, an unusual transformation occurred: he embraced reading and writing.
Jimmy was shaken by the voices of Pablo Neruda and Garcia Lorca, and made a choice that would alter his destiny forever.
Instead of becoming a hardened criminal, he emerged from prison with his own poetic voice.
During this time, Baca taught himself to read and write, and he began to compose poetry. 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.
In 1979, the year after his release, he earned his GED.
Over the years, Jimmy’s work has matured from journal-like poems to revealing memoirs and poignant short stories. His themes include American Southwest barrios, addiction, injustice, community, love, and beyond.
Black Mesa Poems (1986-89) was Jimmy’s first widely-published poetry collection. Martin & Meditations on the South Valley (1987), his highly-acclaimed long narrative poem, won the 1988 Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award. His 2001 memoir, A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet won the prestigious International Award.
His first short story collection, The Importance of a Piece of Paper, was published in 2004.
Jimmy wrote the screenplay for the controversial 1993 Taylor Hackford film Bound by Honor (aka Blood in, Blood out).
An International Poetry Slam champion, Jimmy’s other awards include the National Endowment of Poetry Award, Vogelstein Foundation Award, Berkeley Regents Award, Pushcart Prize, Southwest Book Award, and American Book Award.
As an essayist, editor, and foreword guest, Jimmy chooses authors and subjects which mirror his own journey from outsider to artist.
For more than 25 years, he has conducted writing workshops in correctional facilities across the United States.
In 2005, he founded Cedar Tree, Inc., a nonprofit organization that runs the Prison Literacy Project, which avails education and scholarships to inmates.
A PBS documentary about the project is being produced. Jimmy is the 2006 recipient of the American Council on Education’s Cornelius P. Turner Award for outstanding public service achievement since earning a GED.
Extracted from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Santiago_Baca
http://www.hispanicheritage.org/hispanic_det.php?id=23
Poet Alejandro Murguía reads Jimmy Bacca's memoir:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVZgYE8XLRc
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