Jimmy Santiago Baca

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Jimmy Santiago Baca is an American writer.

Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1952. His parents abandoned him at the age of seven, leaving him, and his siblings, Mieyo and Martina, at their grandparent's house. After his grandfather died in 1959, Jimmy and Mieyo were sent to an orphanage, while his sister stayed with the grandmother to help her out. A runaway at age thirteen, Jimmy and his brother were reunited and lived with their alcoholic and abusive father in a little shack. He eventually moved to California to escape his father, and all the pain back at home. Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison at the age of twenty-one for drug offenses. It was in prison that he learned to read and write and began to compose poetry.

His book Martín & Meditations on the South Valley, a pair of long narrative poems, won an American Book Award in 1988. In addition to his poetry collections and stories, Baca wrote the screenplay for the movie Bound by Honor, which was released by Hollywood Pictures in 1993.

1 Bibliography
2 External links

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Poetry

Jimmy Santiago Baca. Santa Barbara: 1978.
Immigrants in Our Own Land. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8071-0572-4 and ISBN 0-8071-0573-2 (paperback)
Swords of Darkness. San Jose, CA: Mango Publications, 1981.
What’s Happening. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1982. ISBN 0-915306-27-1
Poems Taken from my Yard. Fulton, MO: Timberline Press, 1986.
Martín & Meditations on the South Valley. New York: New Directions, 1987. ISBN 0-8112-1031-6
Black Mesa. New York: New Directions, 1989. ISBN 0-8112-1102-9
Healing Earthquakes: A Love Story in Poems New York: Grove Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8021-3814-4
Set This Book on Fire. Mena, AR: Cedar Hill Publications, 2001. ISBN 1-891812-23-8
C-train (Dream Boy’s Story) and Thirteen Mexicans. New York: Grove Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8021-3947-7
Winter Poems along the Rio Grande. New York: New Directions, 2004. ISBN 0-8112-1575-X

[edit] Story collections

The Importance of a Piece of Paper. New York: Grove Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8021-1765-1

[edit] Non-fiction

Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio. Santa Fe: Red Crane Books, 1992. ISBN 1-878610-08-2
A Place to Stand : The Making of a Poet. New York: Grove Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8021-1602-7