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Analysis Of Jimmy Santiago Baca's A Place To Stand

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The prison system in America is meant to break the will of those being institutionalized. But there are some who do not bow down, some do not break, and some who find a better path to take, coming out a better man, than they were walking in. Baca shows that it is possible to get past the system in his memoir A Place to Stand. Baca says, “But if prison was the place of my downfall, a place where my humanity was cloaked by the rough fabric of the most primitive manhood, it was also the place of my ascent. I became a different man, not because prison was good for me, but in spite of its destructive forces “ (Baca 4). This shows the reader that it is possible to get through the system even if you are stubborn. A Place to stand, by author and poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, shows all the hardships and happy times in his life. It showed him going to prison for six and a half years, selling and doing drugs, and being in an isolation cell for roughly three years of his incarceration. It shows the unfairness and the complete authority one human being has over another. Through all of this, he discovers his passion. That passion being poetry in any …show more content…

It does not just bring the reader down to the depths of depression the author went through. The poem also goes into how a life changing event can cause dramatic change in your view of the world. Baca states in the second half of the poem that, “ I practice being myself, and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me” (“Who Understands Me but Me”). He means that, while every physical thing was taken away, they could not take away him. The prison system may have taken his identity and gave him a number, but they could not take his spirit and soul. In Fact, he actually strengthened his mind, and will because everything else was taken from him. Everything that was taken away, was given back to him, through his own means and not relying on anyone else, just as prison has taught him to

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