A Rewarding Conversation with Jimmy Santiago Baca

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Jimmy Santiago Baca is a poet, memoirist, and screenwriter from New Mexico of Chicano and Apache descent. Baca's poetry collections include Jimmy Santiago Baca, (1978), Immigrants in Our Own Land, (1979), Swords of Darkness, (1981),What's Happening (1982), Poems Taken from My Yard (1986), Martín &, Meditations on the South Valley (1986), Immigrants in Our Own Land, and Selected Earlier Poems, 1990, Black Mesa Poems (1995), In the Way of the Sun (1997), Set This Book on Fire (1999), Healing Earthquakes (2001),  C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans: Dream Boy's Story (Grove Press, 2002),  His "memoir", A Place to Stand (2001), is the winner of the prestigious International Award which chronicles his troubled youth and the five-year jail-stint that brought about his personal transformation. A Place to Stand was developed into a documentary film about his life, which aired on PBS.

Santiago Baca wrote the screenplay for a Hollywood production, Blood In Blood Out. Baca also appeared as an actor in the film and as one of its producers

A film based on Baca's memoir A Place to Stand, directed by Daniel Glick, was released in 2014. The film was produced by Gabriel Baca, David Gruban, and Andres Salazar. The creators of the movie also made a school curriculum to strengthen and highlight the morals within Baca's life story, containing a workbook and films.

Cedar Tree, Inc.,  was founded in 2004 by Jimmy and his wife and is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to transforming lives through writing and literature.

I had the pleasure and honor of asking Jimmy about outreach programs for former prisoners and their importance, how his indigenous ancestry plays a role in his creative process, and what has been one of the most complex parts when recalling events and putting them to paper as a memoirist and so much more.

UZOMAH: During your prison sentence, you learned to read. How do you see learning to read as a means of finding a different kind of freedom and the learning process?

JIMMY: The different kind of freedom comes when you accompany an author or poet in your imagination and his world is revealed to you in an utterly new way that awakens your own imagination. And of course, the learning process occurs when you visit his culture, his world when you enter his reality.

U: How can more prison systems benefit from more literacy programs and poetry programs?

J: They humanize, they empathize the heart to an author’s world, its peoples and customs and reflects other ways of handling certain situations, and poetry awakens the mind’s eye, opens it to a land of possibilities of beauty and courage, bravery and compassion, noble sentiments that melt the iron of your ways and lift you on wings of metaphorical beauty.

U: How has being a screenwriter and poet helped you tell stories of not just where you have been but of both your culture and heritage?

J: Screenwriter is another mode of communication, you reach many non-readers, and poetry appeals to a deeper stratum of the soul, that which speaks of the essence of life and awakens one with its inspiring potential t live as fully and kindly as possible. 

U: What are some topics you still want to explore through your writing?

J: Too many to go into here—Indigenous myth, second memoir, more poetry, another novel, etc. life is young, my friend.

U: How does your indigenous ancestry play a role in your creative process?

J: They attend me in spirit with every written syllable.

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U: What is the best thing that has happened to you and for you as a result of expressing yourself through the literary arts that may not have been in any other medium?

J: Writing and poetry in particular have changed my life to such a degree that I could compare my pre-writing life to an anthill and my current writing life to the Himalayas. I kiss the hand of God with every step of my ascent.

U: Why are imagery and metaphors such powerful tools for you in your use of them in poetry?

J: They elicit the energy from the subconscious and primordial zones of the mind where other times and cosmic memories still float like stars laden with flowers in the eternal springtime of life’s infinite heart.

U: How does solitary confinement on inmates reflect how people treat one another in society?

J: In society, whether we wish to delude ourselves or not, we live in solitary confinement, albeit the conditions are better, there is no longer community in America, we are all on lockdown, we fear our neighbors, burglaries and theft are at an all-time high and growing, we treat each other with disdain and suspicion, it’s the same, except prison is a microcosm….

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U: Can you discuss the importance of prison outreach programs and your involvement in outreach?

J: Outreach programs are indispensable to lowering the incarceration rate and civilizing our society, prisoners deserve human treatment and help to reintegrate into society.

I have had literacy programs for 50 yrs for ex-cons, giving away books, and countless success stories…..

U: What is one stereotype people have about inmates that is the complete opposite of what is true? Has it changed since the pandemic?

J: That they cannot be rehabilitated and that prison helps—the former is a myth, the latter a barbaric sorrow we all suffer in making our society vile and violent…

U: As a Memoirist, what has been one of the most complex parts when recalling events and putting them to paper?

J: Revisiting the pain.

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U: How does poetry capture a moment for you?

J:  It emblazons the soul with self-love….

U: If you could select one poem, you have written that you want to be known for, which one would it be and why?

J: All of them…

U: You released a new collection of essays, Laughing in the Light. What do you find the most interesting about the writing process while compiling and creating?

J: I wrote that book and those essays using a stream of consciousness…the epistolary format, love doing it…..mistakes and all……

U: Do you write the poem or does it write you?

J: Both. And sometimes even thrice.

For more information about Jimmy, Cedar Tree, Inc, and his writing, please visit his site.