Summary
Jimmy Santiago Baca's literary career began during a five-year stint in prison, during which he wrote poems in exchange for cigarettes. Four decades, 12 books, two endowed chairs (at Berkeley and Yale), and one Hollywood screenplay (1993's Blood In, Blood Out, cowritten with Jeremy Iacone and Floyd Mutrux) later, Baca remains the foremost poet and novelist of America's barrios. Burning his candle at both ends, Baca has written about the down and out of the Ro Grande Valley for the country's literati while conducting thousands of writing workshops for the urban and rural poor in community colleges, prisons, reservations, and high schools where libraries and books are scarce. Writing, after all, was what got him out of prison.
"I started writing when I was in jail," Baca said in a telephoneSee the full content of this document
Extract
The Barrio Cantatas of J.S. Baca
interview with Pasatiempo. From his bunk, he overheard inmates recount childhoods marked by physical and sexual abuse and sighed, "That's life. The pallor of evil that lies in imprisoning people, the sociopaths that fill the cell -- I felt this massive, massive threat to my existence and to who I wanted to be as a human being."
His po...See the full content of this document
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