40 pages • 1 hour read
Jimmy Santiago BacaA Place to Stand
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Jimmy Santiago Baca is a poet and the author of A Place to Stand, which is a memoir of Baca’s early life. Baca is a member of a dysfunctional family, and both parents abandon him and his siblings when the children are quite young. As a result, Baca feels that he is different from others who have had a more stable upbringing. He feels uncomfortable in society and lives on its fringes until he is arrested for a crime he did not commit.
Baca is sent to prison, where he must learn to defend himself from predatory inmates who have nothing to lose. While in prison, Baca occupies much of his time with daydreams of a better time, a time before his family is torn apart. When Baca, who is nearly illiterate, begins to write letters to a pen-pal, their correspondence creates a desire for literacy in Baca. Baca begins a campaign to hone his reading and writing skills, and soon he is writing letters as a service to other prisoners. Baca also begins to write poetry, some of which he shares with his cellmates. As a result of this avocation, Baca begins to feel more at ease with himself. Writing gives Baca the identity he has sought all his life.
Cecilia Baca
Cecilia Baca has three children: Jimmy, Mieyo, and Martina. Her volatile relationship with their father, however, eventually drives her to leave the marriage. Cecilia leaves her husband and children to elope with a man named Richard, who requires her to hide her Chicano heritage, and her previous marriage. She gains material possessions and social status from the marriage, and she has children with Richard who do not know about her three Baca children. The lies apparently burden her because she decides to tell the truth about her past and leave Richard. When she informs Richard of her decision, he follows through on his promise to kill her if she should ever leave him. Richard shoots her five times in the face and then kills himself.
Damacio Baca
Damacio Baca is Cecilia Baca’s husband, and Jimmy Baca’s father. His drunken violence frightens his wife and three children. When his wife leaves the family, Baca goes on a drunken, wandering search for her. Their children are left with grandparents, and the two boys are eventually sent to an orphanage. Jimmy Baca, in particular, wishes for a relationship with his father, whom he has always loved. The two are never reunited, however, and Damacio dies while his son is in prison.
Mieyo Baca
Mieyo Baca is Jimmy’s protective older brother. After the Baca children’s parents desert them, they live with their grandparents. When their grandfather dies, however, Mieyo and Jimmy are sent to live in an orphanage. Mieyo is hard-working and ambitious, but the brothers have little contact once Jimmy is incarcerated. Mieyo visits Jimmy at the prison once with his girlfriend, but his drinking begins to escalate following his visit to the prison. Mieyo’s drinking reaches a crisis point following his mother’s murder, and he is beaten to death in an alley.
Martina Baca
Martina Baca is the younger sister of Mieyo and Jimmy. She is allowed to stay in Estancia to care for her grandmother, so she does not go to the orphanage with her brothers. Martina attempts to help Mieyo stop drinking, but he is unable to cope with his mother’s death.
Related Titles
By Jimmy Santiago Baca
