Analysis Of Jimmy Santiago Baca's A Place To Stand

When you think of poetry the last thing that pops in your head is this could save lives, but in Rob Baker’s “Jimmy Santiago Baca: Poetry as Lifesaver” he claims that poetry is more tha just a form of writing, it can save lives. Baker used Jimmy Baca’s life to drive his main point in his essay. Jimmys life changed “many times in his life” (893) Baker used these points in his life to display how poetry and writing can change lives. Bacas life had a rough start.

In the essay, “Coming Into Language,” Jimmy Santiago Baca, discusses the topic of literacy. He asserts that along the way of all the suffering he went through, he found a meaning in life through reading and writing. At the beginning, he opens up by illustrating the job he had when was only seventeen. At seventeen years old, Baca was detained by the authorities as a murder suspect and years later after being released he was arrested again. During his time in prison, he gained interest in written language because he heard other prisoners read.

The prison-industrial complex is a corrupt political system that consists of overpowered politicians whose sole ambition is exploiting poor, uneducated, and under-privileged Americans to make money. Although, it wasn’t initially the purpose when Rockefeller started the war on drugs, but he started something bigger than he could’ve imagined at that time. The prison system has been proven to be ineffective, and costly waste of resources. However, it probably won’t be abolished due to the cash flow that it brings to some of the largest corporations in the

Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Self Revelation Through Poetry A man with nothing to lose could be considered more dangerous than a man with everything to gain. The back and forth, up and down, side to side story of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s life shows that a man fighting for survival yearns more than a man fighting for simple possessions. Prison takes a toll on people differently, but those people have to accept the fact that jail is now their home for the time being. Some may continue along the beaten path, consuming themselves with regret, anger, or denial; but, some may seek a smoother path, digging deep and figuring out how to modify their lives for the better.

Born on July 19, 1909, Chester Himes was an African-American writer that was jailed between 1929 to 1936 for armed robbery. Serving his sentence at the Ohio State Penitentiary, the experience of being a prisoner served as an inspiration for Himes’ short stories. More specifically, two of his short stories show how the main characters respond to their punishment while in prison. In “His Last Day”, the main character Spats puts on a mask that hides his fear of death and as the story progresses his inner fear starts to show. On the other hand, in “Money Don’t Spend In The Stir” Harvey Johnson can’t accept the fact that his bribes won’t get him released from prison.

While in jail the former hatchet man to the President noticed the despair and lack of purpose that his prison mates displayed. Even while in jail Charles identified the reason for sadness. “250 men lived here, but watching them through the window was like watching a silent movie in slow motion. Droop shouldered, sticklike figures of men were drifting aimlessly and slowly in the open area: others were propped up against the buildings and a few sitting in small clusters on benches. The figures just seem to be floating ever so slowly.

First you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That 's institutionalized.’ A prison should aim at retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. I am very well convinced that prison has served its first three purposes by depriving offenders’ freedom, but the

This is an important role of poetry because everyone loses something precious to them at some point in their life. Her next example talks of a person who can receive

The View from Black America by Kenneth Hardy, describes the struggles that the African American community still faces currently. The article outlines the lives lost by violence and shootings by police. The reading emphasizes the lack of resources the African American community has access to. The misconceptions about black people have also contributed the racial hostility. These attitudes affect an individual's mental health.

So then, why doesn’t Americans want immigrants to come to their country, when they were immigrants once? Are Americans becoming selfish? Is America no longer “the best” country to go to? There are lots of questions that can be debatable. However, you have probably heard that the immigrants coming to the United States are destroying their country by taking away their jobs, not paying taxes, draining our economy and so on.

The “13th” is a documentary about the American system of incarceration and the economic forces behind racism in America especially in people of color. One of the claims that the author mentioned is that today incarceration is an extension of slavery. It is also mentioned that most of the time in society we are defined by race. In the documentary, we can see how African Americans are sentenced for many years since they are too poor to pay their fines or sometimes most of these people plead guilty to get out of jail fast. However, African Americans are separated from their families and also treated inhumanly in prisons just because they are of a particular race.

Implications for this book include Santos’s desire to help fix the prison system and the mass incarceration issue the U.S is facing. Santos is also helping other that are being prosecuted by the failing system. Upon being released and piecing his life back together, Santos started his own foundation called the Michael G Santos foundation. Through this foundation, Santos is helping bring awareness to the socials issues that result from mass incarceration while also helping former prisoner transition and integrate successfully back into the work force. Through Santos’s hard work and commitment, Santos successfully helped Maine’s department of corrections enhance their prison system by the virtue of his own programs that he has developed post

In Adam Gopnik 's piece “Caging of America,” he discusses one of the United States biggest moral conflicts: prison. Gopniks central thesis states that prison itself is a cruel and unjust punishment. He states that the life of a prisoner is as bad as it gets- they wake up in a cell and only go outside for an hour to exercise. They live out their sentences in a solid and confined box, where their only interaction is with themselves. Gopnik implies that the general populace is hypocritical to the fact that prison is a cruelty in itself.

This preconceived notion could not be farther from the truth. In reality, these reform movements are idiotically placing a bandaid over the tremendous issue that the prison system is. An imbalance of reforms between women and men, unrestrained sexual abuse in women’s prisons, and tyrannical gender roles are just three of countless examples of how prison reform movements only create more misfortune and fail to provide any real solution to worsening prison conditions. Perhaps instead of conjuring up additional ideas on how to reform prisons, America’s so-called democratic society should agree upon abolishing prisons as a whole. This being said, it is crucial to identify ongoing issues in today’s society, understand how they contribute to unlawful behavior, and seek a solution.

INTRODUCTION This essay will address how gender roles are discussed in Philippe Bourgois ethnographic book, ‘In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio’. This will be pursued by exploring one of the key characters in this text. This essay will primarily centre on the role of women based of the stories of Candy. The other main characters in this text are of male gender.