Jimmy Santiago Baca's A Place To Stand

More often than not, one can gauge whether resistance is present through the reactions of one’s oppressors. In A Place to Stand, Baca is sure to portray plenty of ways his formation of language was either impeded or partially destroyed by authority figures around him, his ability to express himself through language actively stifled from the start of his incarceration to its end. By attempting to keep Baca from achieving literacy, these structures are directly investing a great amount of power in language. This is emphasized when Baca is pulled astray again and again throughout the text. Near the start of his incarceration, Baca was quite literally denied the opportunity of education, the “committee [responsible claiming they could not] in good

His audience can see, from his initial introduction to language, to his cultural education, to his superiors’ reaction to his literacy, that Baca’s willingness to speak out, to write poetry, and to communicate are inherent acts of resistance and revolution, no matter how inconsequential they may seem at face value. As his memoir is a depiction of a real life, whether liberation is or is not achieved is up for debate (if liberation is achievable at all), but, through the use of language, Baca establishes the beginning of his resistance to many of the vicious cycles which marginalization can perpetuate, a form of resistance that will hopefully continue on to aid the generations that may follow in his footsteps. Through language, Baca finds his self-worth and is able to acknowledge the systematic injustices that have plagued and destroyed facets of himself, as well as most of his family. Though language does not provide the opportunity to entirely reconstruct what has been lost, it can act as a safeguard against the possibility of even more devastation. Thus, the existence of A Place to Stand is a form of resistance in itself. Just like other texts by incarcerated figures, such as Wall Tappings and Mother California, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s memoir is a staunch reminder that incarcerated men and women desperately and unequivocally believe they need to be