Jimmy Santiago Baca's brilliantly received memoir, A Place to Stand,
earned him the prestigious International Prize and offered a keyhole
view into the brutal personal history that shaped -- and continues to
inform -- his raw, incisive voice. In C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans, he
trains his hallmark lyrical intensity on the dark underbelly of
addiction and takes us on an unforgettable guided tour of the darkest
corners of a brutal, unjust world. C-Train is a heartstopping series of
episodes from the life of Dream-boy, a young man who finds himself
seduced, and later enslaved, by the siren song of cocaine. Part paean to
the delicious power of intoxication, part lament for those helplessly
under its power, C-Train is a ride its hero, and the reader, struggle to
get off. In Thirteen Mexicans, Baca writes of the Chicano community and
the gulf between the American dream and American reality. In searing,
elegiac vignettes he portrays the raw beauty of life in the barrio and
the surreal, stomach-turning moment when people of color must confront
how they are reflected in the distorted mirror of white society. Giving
voice to the dispossessed and the disenfranchised, Baca illuminates the
most unforgiving landscapes; yet his is a vision tempered by a searching
hopefulness that brings these collections inching toward redemption.
Baca's latest achievement will confirm his place as one of the nation's
leading poets, a poet whose words heal, inspire, and elicit the earthly
response of love (Garrett Hongo). [Baca] writes with ... an intense
lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and
archetypal significance of life-events. -- Denise Levertov
