Jimmy Santiago Baca's A Place To Stand

What can reading do? Can it stop the use of drugs.Can it stop alcoholism; can it stop a murder; can it stop people wandering around on the streets at night? Reading is not an option in the narrator’s mind at first. He rarely go to school, spends most of his early life on drug deal, alcohol and serves in prison. His name is Jimmy Santiago Baca, who is not only the protagonist but also the author of the book A Place to Stand. At Baca’s young age, he is like a lonely traveler that gets lost in fog; he has struggled to walk out, ends up deep in the forest. Baca uses irony of his actions, expressive sentences, and his brother to emphasize his differences after he is reborn in jail because of reading changes him to a new person. With the support

He uses “his brother” to show the family influences to both him and his brother.As states in the the story “ Mieyo, on the other hand, was casting himself into deeper and deeper isolation, into a place where I could not help him as I once did as a kid brother”(201). Baca mentions “as I once did” which hints that he knows what his brother faces because they have the same issue that they hardly communicate to others. And this shows Baca no longer puts himself into deeper and deeper isolation. He overcomes what his brother is struggling right now.He comes further and further away from his brother. On the other hand, his relationship with his brother also comes further away because his brother has draw an uncrossable line and separates himself from people around him.To support that, Baca writes “ I could not help him.”Baca smartly writes about his brother who not only compares their similarities on the same experiences but also distinguish their differences in order to show that his changes, and the reinforcement of the power of reading. Reading gives him a second chance to be someone