One of America's leading poets describes his youth in New Mexico, his troubled adolescence, his years as a drug dealer in Arizona and San Diego, and the personal redemption that occurred after he was arrested and sent to prison. Anyone who doubts the power of the written word to transform a life will know better after reading poet Jimmy Santiago Baca's wrenching memoir of his troubled youth and the five-year jail stint that turned him around. When he enters New Mexico's Florence State Prison in 1973, convicted on a drug charge, Baca is 21 and has a long history of trouble with the law. There's no reason to think jail will do anything but turn him into a hardened criminal, and standing up for himself with guards and menacing fellow cons quickly gains him a reputation as a troublemaker. But there have already been hints that this turbulent young man is looking for a way out, as he painstakingly spells out a poem from a clerk's college textbook while awaiting trial or unsuccessfully tries to get permission to take classes in prison. When a volunteer from a religious group sends him a letter, contact with the written word unleashes something in Baca, who starts writing letters and poems with the aid of a dictionary. Reading literature shows him possibilities for understanding his painful family background and expressing his feelings. Poetry literally saves him from being a murderer, as Baca stands over another convict with an illegal weapon, ready to finish him off, and hears "the voices of Neruda and Lorca... praising life as sacred and challenging me: How can you kill and still be a poet?" Baca has a year to go on his sentence, but the reader knows at that point he has made a choice that will alter his destiny. Without softening the brutality of life in jail, Baca expresses great tenderness for the men there who helped him and affirms his commitment to writing poetry for them, "telling the truth about the life that prisoners have to endure." --Wendy Smith Poet Baca's (Black Mesa Poems) memoir reveals a complex early life. Alternately loved and abandoned by his alcoholic father and his mother, nurtured by grandparents but sent to an orphanage when his grandfather died, Baca was illiterate at 21 and unable to support himself legitimately. Beyond self-pity, however, he acknowledges his own as well as others' responsibility for his path to prison. Arrested for dealing drugs but falsely accused of shooting an FBI agent, Baca was betrayed by friends, attorneys, and the legal system. His unflinching account of his incarceration, with its brutality and occasional benevolence, reveals the paradox of prison life. Ironically, his time in solitary confinement redeemed him, prompting lifesaving memories of his rural New Mexico childhood, which ignited his ability to use language to elevate himself above his immediate surroundings. The rustic imagery is beautiful, but beautiful, too, is the sun's path down the dark prison corridor. Baca, who has temerity and talent, was ultimately released, but his narrative begs the question: How many incarcerated individuals languish in U.S. prisons, victims of a system that history may someday compare to a medieval dungeon? Worth reading from both a literary and a social perspective, this book is recommended for all public and academic libraries. [Baca's new collection of poetry, Healing Earthquakes: A Love Story in Poems, will be released by Grove in July. Ed.] Nedra C. Evers, Sacramento P.L., C. - Nedra C. Evers, Sacramento P.L., CA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Poetry seems antithetical to the poverty, racism, and violence that wracked Baca's tragic youth, but the power of language is what kept him alive and sane while he served hard time in a hellish federal prison. Now a prizewinning poet and screenwriter, Baca, born in New Mexico in 1952, was abandoned by his parents and put in an orphanage at age seven. He learned to fight but not to read and, in spite of good intentions, ran into nothing but trouble. Baca chronicles his brutal experiences with riveting exactitude and remarkable evenhandedness. An unwilling participant in the horrific warfare that rages within prison walls and a rebel who refused to be broken by a vicious and corrupt system, Baca taught himself to read and write, awoke to the voice of the soul, and converted "doing time" into a profoundly spiritual pursuit. Poetry became a lifeline, and Baca's harrowing story will stand among the world's most moving testimonies to the profound value of literature. Baca has also written a potent new book of poems (see p.1971). Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved