Champion of the International Poetry Slam, winner of the Before Columbus
American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, the
Pushcart Prize, and the prestigious International Award, Jimmy Santiago
Baca has been writing as a mestizo (part Native American, part Mexican)
and an outsider ever since he learned to read and write--in
English--during a six-year Federal prison sentence when he was in his
twenties. Drawing on his rich ethnic heritage and his life growing up in
poverty in the Southwestern United States, Baca has a created a body of
work which speaks to the disenfranchised by drawing on his experiences
as a prisoner, a father, a poet, and by reflecting on the lush, and
sometimes stark, landscape of the Rio Grande valley.
In response to increased demand for Latino poetry in Spanish, and to
thousands of Baca fans who are bilingual, this unique collection
contains Spanish translations of Baca's poetry selected from the volumes
Martín and Mediations on the South Valley (1987), Black Mesa Poems
(1989), Immigrants in Our Own Land (1990), Healing Earthquakes
(2001), C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans (2002), Winter Poems Along the
Rio Grande (2004), and Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande (2007).