Every two years, the Writing Department at my university chooses a campus book which all freshman are required to read in their first year. We invite the author of the book to visit to speak to students about their work, and last week, author and poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, spoke to us about his life and writing.
I’ve read Baca’s memoir, A Place to Stand, four times in preparation for my classes, so I’m incredibly familiar with the Baca we meet across the page. What’s fascinating about his story, is that after a childhood marked by the abandonment of various family members, by his early twenties, Baca was an illiterate inmate serving time in a federal prison.
He is now a world-renowned poet, memoirist, and novelist, after teaching himself to read while in prison. He says that learning to write, and finally having the words to express the deep wounds, desires, and needs inside of him, saved him from a life ruled by violence and crime.
He stole the first book he attempted to read–a textbook from a college student who worked in the prison–and stopped in frustration when the letters swam incoherently on the page. He later received a dictionary as a gift, and began to teach himself to read letter by letter, word by word.
He grew as a reader and as a poet while serving time, and books served as a means of escape, a portal to freedom. While his body was imprisoned, his mind roamed the infinite universe, formed by bright constellations of words.
Baca’s rebirth as a poet and writer is a fascinating story on the page, but even more so, was the man who stood in front of us–a physical testament to the life-giving power of words. He read from his work, and his poetry, read first in Spanish, then in English, sent a shiver of knowing down my spine.
One of my students asked Baca how he survived years of solitary confinement while in prison, and Baca replied, “Dreams, baby, dreams. I survived by the power of my imagination.”
All the while, he spun worlds into being, alone in his head.
Since his visit, I’ve continued to think about the power that stories have to shape us. Baca has written about the great poets and novelists he read while in prison and how their words eventually formed his own. Baca’s story has shaped mine because I’ve spent so much time steeped in his experience. His story has taught me empathy above all else.
This week, I asked friends on instagram what stories (fiction specifically) have shaped their character in some way, or informed their lives in such a way that they’ve been changed by the words they’ve encountered. The responses have been a world of discovery. I’d love to know what stories shaped you, dear readers. Hit reply on this email, or respond in the comments. I’ll gather our responses and share them later.
As always, thank you for being here. Thank you for holding my stories with tenderness. Thank you for reading.
