A Place At Stand By Jimmy Santiago Baca

In “I Am Offering this Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, the speaker reveals his attitude about love, offering a girl a love poem in hopes that she will accept it since he has nothing else to give her. He redefines the meaning of love using imagery and figurative language. For instance, when he says “ Keep it like a warm coat…” (stanza 1) When the speaker says this he is using figurative language, do to the fact that the poem is powerful in meaning. This shows the speaker's love towards her by saying that when she is cold to remember his love and he will keep her warm. Also when he says “... it is a pot full of yellow corn to warm your belly in winter ” (stanza 2) The speaker is offering all the basic needs in life such as a coat,socks,yellow

Music is an escape from the challenges of reality. It is also an escape from oneself. In The Soloist which is based off of a true story, Nathaniel Ayers and Steve Lopez are two strangers with different life challenges that bring them together. Steve Lopez is a reporter for the Las Angeles Times who needs a story for his column. Nathaniel Ayers is a homeless musician who struggles with schizophrenia. Through their challenges an unlikely friendship begins to occur.

It can be extremely difficult to focus on things that one may want to do in order for them to change their life. Life is full of surprises that sometimes we find ourselves becoming the person we never imagined to be. The memoir A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca, a story about a man who was abandoned by his parents at a very young age, having a mother who desired to blend into “white world” and an alcoholic father, a man who was convicted at the age of twenty-one. Baca’s story tells about how he changes his life from being illiterate to becoming a poet inside the prison, exploring his inspirational transformation through poetry. This is a Journey of how Baca took charged of his life and molded himself as the person he is now.

A boy feels trapped and isolated in his house. He wants to go outside with his friends and explore the landscape, but he can't. His mom isolates him inside making him study and do extra work for school. He wants to leave, breathe in the fresh air, but he can't escape his mother’s grasp. This scenario represents a similar idea addressed in the vignette “The House on Mango Street”: Isolation. In The House On Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros is able to incorporate details and characterization to illustrate Esperanza’s isolation due to her moving constantly. Ultimately, the way Cisneros develops the use of symbolism, the theme of identity and literary devices in the vignette leads one to see why it is the most powerful chapter in the novel.

In Chapter 3 of his memoir, poet and author Jimmy Santiago Baca recalls being eighteen when he was notified his mother had returned to Albuquerque and living a comfortable life with her new family. All hopes of reunifying with her were shattered on the day he visited her and was introduced as a friend, this was a betrayal in his heart. When he was released from a Montessa Park jail after four months of incarceration for suspicion of first-degree murder, he made the decision to leave Albuquerque as a solution to detach himself from despairing past memories, with only a little money and no clue to what he was going to do he traveled west. Once he arrived to the west coast, he was at awe with the scenery of the city and beaches

Reading this book is an emotional roller coaster ride. At first there was an hollow feeling in my stomach. This was due to all the family related incidents. “Even as scared as I was by the jail, I wanted to sit on the floor outside the cell bars and hold his hand because he needed me” (Jimmy Santiago Baca 2). The quotation shows the bond between father and son. Baca was being self-sacrificing, willing to endure the pain with Damacio in prison. The hollow feeling continued when learning about the hardship that faced Cecilia. “‘You were so drunk you don’t even remember.’ Tears streamed down her cheeks” (Jimmy Santiago Baca 9). I can sympathize for Cecilia because an associate close to me has been a victim of rape. I have witnessed how the event

In the poem, “Oppression”, Jimmy Santiago Baca expresses his views on the importance of fighting against oppression, for emancipation. Firstly, in the opening stanza, Baca enforces the idea that even in hardships, the reader is still human and still deserves human rights. When he writes that the reader should “always, always [be] remembering [they] are human” (4-5), he emphasizes that the oppressed should fight for the respect that they are worthy of, even though they are constantly denied it. Secondly, Baca states that the reader must “look deep to find the grains of hope and strength, and sing” (6-7) which encourages one to persevere with the battle against oppression. It conveys the message that while one must work hard and that the challenges

It is possible that Ernesto is suffering from abuse or neglect at home. Based on his adverse self-concept, it is appears that someone is psychologically and/or emotionally abusing Ernesto. His lack of motivation seems to be a direct result of his negative self-esteem. Ernesto also states that he is “punished at home”. His withdraw from his classmates show signs of isolation, which can be an indicator of abuse. Ernesto’s lack of relationships with his

Poet and author Jimmy Santiago Baca was born 1952 in Santa Fe, New Mexico to a mother of Spanish descent and a father of Mexican descent who married at a very young age. In his memoir, “A Place to Stand”, he recounts in Chapter 1 growing up poor and being a young child with two older siblings witnessing his father’s alcoholism, gambling, womanizing, and vulgar behavior. His parent’s were constantly arguing and fighting because of all the broken promises his father made about changing his undesirable habits. As a 6 year old child he lived with the fear his father would physically hurt his mother during a drunken episode, or that one day his father would go away and never return. He recalls the day his mother left him and his siblings with grandma and

Enrique was just a young boy when his mother left for the United States. Soon after, Enrique would fall into addiction and robbery. After receiving meaningless gifts from his mother, he decided to set out on a journey to find his mother in the United States. Enrique soon comes face to face with absolutely appalling conditions. These include, corrupt police, starvation, thieves, and camps ridden with disease. Despite this, Enrique ends up finding his mother, his story is not a happy one however. Nevertheless, these experiences result in Enrique becoming a stronger and wiser person.

People do not always get to have the fairytale life they once dreamed of. Life comes with many struggles, but people can overcome them if they really want to. They choose to follow a certain path in their life, which at times it can be good or bad. In the book, “Tijuana Straits”, by Kem Nunn, the author explains the different life experiences of certain characters in the book and how their life ended up. Unlike a fairytale, he gives the different perspective and point of views of the characters. Nunn gave enough information to know how the character’s lives ended up the way it did. The characters, Fahey, Armando, and Magdalena, were each described with a different persona so that each one sticks out different than the other.

All authors have a purpose when writing their stories, and that is to provide a message to their readers. This message is known as theme, and literature from all around the world provide one. The themes of H.H. Munro’s The Open Window, Hernando Téllez’s Just Lather, That’s All, and Alden Nowlan’s The Fall of a City, all relate to humanity, and our roles in society. H.H Munro states that we deceive others of their reality, while Hernando Téllez demonstrates that each person has their own place in society, and Alden Nowlan discusses how one’s actions and words can affect others.

"Los Venditos," which signifies "the sold out ones," is a play that was correlated by Luis Valdez and created by the Farm Workers Theater of Atzlan. They have built their theater society with respect to the old show clubs that were common in the striker 's groups of the sixties and seventies. In these groups, performing artists and performers would assume parts that would ridicule certain gatherings or people that they were opposing. Case in point, if the produce pickers were striking against a cultivator, then the play would draw out every generalization that individual put stock in or each awful quality that that individual had and would decorate it. They would make their focus out to be inept and uninformed. "Los Venditos" finishes this errand extremely well on the grounds that it demonstrates each generalization that Anglos have against Mexican Americans, and places it in a manner that will make any Anglo be embarrassed for having accepted such falsities. Everything that was put into the play was put there for a reason, whether it is a real occurrence or a typical generalization.

To begin with, the overall atmosphere created by the author implies a sense of loneliness. ‘Soledad’, the setting of the book, means loneliness in Spanish, and many hints, such as the numerous games of ‘solitaire’ played, also refer back to the theme, as it a word that sounds familiar to solitary, meaning isolated. The contrasting effects of the first section, with the description of a beautiful scenery, broken by the sound of the highway, also creates a sense of

He turns to alcohol and drugs while his daughter and girlfriend languish thousands of mile away, so the cycle that began with his mother continues. Enrique’s struggles allow him to think that abandoning his daughter without her mother is a rational decision in such a harsh world.