Summary Of A Place To Stand By Jimmy Santiago Baca

Specifically, the treatment of the many prisoners at the hands of the guards had really stood out to me. How handcuffs, leg-irons, strip searches, and comments such as “spread’m, Tonto” had become his day to day routine. In just a small section of the book, he shows the attitude that many guards take when dealing with people they are arresting or who are already incarcerated. They disrespect the inmates, not because they have to, but almost because they want to.

The distressing experience of operating as a prison guard in such a notorious penal facility as New York State’s Sing Sing Penitentiary is one that is unlikely to be desired by one not professionally committed to the execution of prison uniformity. However, the outstanding novel written by Tom Conover illustrates the encounters of a journalist who voluntarily plunged himself into the obscure universe of the men and women paid to spend the better portion of their lives behind prison barriers. In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Conover creates a noteworthy document resonating personal emotional occurrences that nonetheless suggest the cultural sensitivity of a true prison guard. From the standpoint of our studies

In A Place to Stand, Jimmy Santiago Baca introduces the readers to his life, providing many details from his past that allow the readers to understand his present. Throughout the novel, Baca finds himself in the midst of violence where ultimately, these instances lead to a common theme of abuse. The physical and mental abuse that Baca endures throughout his childhood plays an important part in shaping Baca’s entire life. Furthermore, the abuse that Baca suffers inflicted by his father, his mother, and his ex-girlfriend, negatively affects his future life and point him towards crime and distrust in people around him.

The author starts by explaining Baca’s background he tells the audience the difficult circumstances that were Baca’s life. All circumstances considered into his young adulthood Baca could hardly read nor write and truly had no desire to learn; Which makes it even more spectacular that he found poetry. His interest began at twenty-one when Baca was in prison, sentenced to possibly five to ten years. A couple years passed and a church program had extended a relationship via a letter they sent, they targeted prisoners without families. Unbeknownst Baca learned through steady communication with the church how to read and write. The writing gave him something to do and in a sense a purpose. Shortly into their connection, the man from the church introduced to a friend who was a poet. After this moment Baca’s life would never be the same. “I believe something in my brain or

After reading the book I have gained a new understanding of what inmates think about in prison. Working in an institution, I have a certain cynical attitude at times with inmates and their requests.

Imagine a South Central fourteen-year-old who is a multiple offender that faked a kidnapping then shot at the police officers trying to stop him. Now imagine a young boy growing up in a violent area always fearful of his life and going through traumatic experiences such as getting shot, seeing his brother killed, and being abused. This same young man, unknowingly, shot at undercover cops. In this instance, a general audience would be more likely to sympathize with the young boy that went through the many hardships. Bryan Stevenson tells this story of Antonio Nuñez with descriptive language in order to justify his argument of Nuñez by appealing strongly to the audience's emotions. Because of sympathy that humans naturally feel, the young boy

In addition to adaptive roles, the film also portrays many instances and forms of prison violence. Prisons provide all of the necessary conditions to host violence (288). The film depicts instances of prisoner-prisoner violence in the form of sexual victimization, prison gangs, and illicit violence by officers against

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

“Oppression”, a poem by Jimmy Baca, is a powerful display of the illusory power of oppression, the fundamental concept of endurance, and the attainment of liberation. In the first stanza, the poet refers to oppression as the infliction of continuous pain through the line “being trampled under”. He connects this with the imbalance of strength when he states that oppression “[i]s a question of strength”. When an imbalance or conquest of power is present, the oppressed has no strength but in his silence. Whereas, the oppressor uses violence to inflict illusory fear in that silent individual. Similarly, the line, “[a]lways, always, remembering that you are human”, demonstrates the poet’s recognition of the fact that even though one may abuse his

Lead: David Fengel had spent 12 years of his life in a prison cell, he had lost his father at a young age and knew nothing of his mother. He said, “I felt alone. As the days passed by, had to detach myself from prison life to prevent myself from becoming evil.”

The first time I entered Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility as a mentor, I was quickly ushered into a room of 40 young incarcerated men aged 14 to 21. I learned our activity for the day was to craft poetry and songs to introduce ourselves. As a songwriter in my free time, I was eager to collaborate with the young men. Yet based off my previous experience leading writing sessions outside of prison, I was concerned that the young men would not be willing to fully express themselves. As the day and weeks went on, I became ashamed in the fact that I ever doubted the young men. With simple guidance, encouragement, and collaboration, they created poetry and song lyrics more emotional, relatable, and impactful than anything I have heard on the radio or in the most hipster of slam-poetry nights at local cafés and they were more than eager to share with anyone willing to listen.

Viktor E. Frankl found a thought-provoking way to explore how crucial it is for a prisoner to adapt to his new life. This is the utmost compelling life insight to myself at this point in my own life. Frankl wrote, “When one examines the vast amount of material which has been amassed as the result of many prisoners’ observations and experiences, three phases of the inmate’s mental reactions to camp life become apparent: the period following his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation” (Frankl 8). As I read on through the book, I found that his ‘adaption to new routine’ life insight has several supporting and crucial aspects like accepting desire, finding beauty in

Solitude is a topic found in several diverse aspects of life: religion, adolescence, and imprisonment. This last facet involves one of the most restricting types of solitude - solitary confinement. Prisoners are punished, for a number of years, to never leave their cells and have relationships with other beings. This drastic change in environment begets drastic changes in people. The three texts, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, “The Bet” by Alexander Chekhov, and “What 28 Years of Solitary Confinement Does to the Mind” by Alexandra Sifferlin explore how the various effects of solitary confinement on the mind and body are immense and irreparable.

"Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.”(Frankl).The way people react during hard times shows a lot about that person. When a person

Inside 19th Century Goal, prisoners were expected to learn the values of tough work to earn a living and often found them subjected to insufferable amounts of hard labour with very little rewards. Separated in their prison cells and made to exercise in silence, these convicted men served their sentences in almost constant confinement, alone only with their own thoughts and feelings. The voices of these voiceless men have often been overlooked and there are very few accounts of life within 19th century prison walls from which we can detail the true feelings of those serving in the British penal system.