Who is I?

I have really mixed feelings about this memoir – part of me really loved it and part of me was really irritated by it. The part of me that loved it loved the story itself, couldn’t put it down, and loved some of the incredible descriptions that Jimmy Santiago Baca gave us. The part of me that didn’t, was incredibly annoyed with some of the craft choices and writing he used. Although, when all is said and done, he didn’t even become literate until he was in twenty’s and was never formally taught to write, so I do give him credit for that. Although I feel like his editors should have stepped in a bit more. Some of his writing I actually wanted to line edit – aka if he was in a workshop with me, I would not tell him this was quite at publishable quality yet. But I’ll get to all this.
The first thing that I have an issue with is the prologue. I like the part of it that is in scene (when he is visiting his father in the drunk tank as a child) – that was definitely working. Maybe I’m under the wrong impression of what a prologue is supposed to do, but I didn’t think that it was basically supposed to sum up the entire book, give heavy-handed foreshadowing, and even give away some of the story. I knew the father died while he was in prison because the prologue basically told me – not in so many words, but it was implied. So towards the end of the actual novel when he tells his dad that he is in prison, I was just basically waiting for him to tell us that he died shortly after. When he does tell us his dad died, I wasn’t surprised at all. That could have been a really emotional moment for the reader had it not been spoiled in the prologue. On page four of the prologue I wrote in the margin “seems cliché and a lot of telling” and on page five next to the top paragraph I wrote “cheesy” and the rest of page I wrote “summing up.” I really don’t understand what page four and five do for this book – the novel itself is powerful and SHOWS us all of these things in the order we are meant to see them, and I feel like telling us beforehand takes away the emotion and the experience of it later on. I was actually really annoyed by this part. Maybe someone can shed some light on this for me? In case you don’t have your book open in front of you, here are some examples of what I’m referring to:

“I had visited it a thousand times in the screams of my father and my drunken uncles, in the tight-lipped scolding of my mother, in the shrill reprimands of the nuns at Saint Anthony’s orphanage; in all the finger-pointing adults who told me I didn’t belong… But if prison was the place of my downfall, a place where my humanity was cloaked by the rough fabric of the most primitive manhood, it was also the place of my ascent. I became a different man, not because prison was good for me, but in spite of its destructive forces. In prison I learned to believe in myself and to dream for a better life. You make use of what is available and near at hand, no matter what your circumstances. I did what I had to do to survive. But I was also determined not to become what in my heart I knew I was not: I was not going to let them make me into a ward of the state. I was lucky, too. For in that place where life and death are waging war every day and the right choice is often the most difficult one, I was able to reach out and find a finger hold on the fragile ledge of hope… Very simply, I learned to read and write… The person I have become, who sits writing in this chair at this desk, has been forged by enormous struggle and unexpected blessings, despite the dehumanizing environment of a prison intended to destroy me. Prison was the most frightening nightmare I ever experienced. It stripped me down to nothing, until I huddled in the dark corner of a cell, sometimes shivering with fear, other times filled with so much anger and self-loathing that it would have been better to die.”

So basically after reading that I know his father and uncles were alcoholics, that he winds up in an orphanage, that he is treated unfairly because he is of Hispanic decent (I didn’t type that part out, but it read as very cliché to me), that he goes to prison where he learns how to read and write, that prison was very scary and sometimes he was afraid and other times angry, that he came out of it a stronger person. Really?! He SHOWS us all of that through scene in the book, in a MUCH more powerful way (and in a less cheesy and cliché way because he makes it his own story), so why did he tell us all of this here?! Anyway, I’m done with the prologue rant now. Moving on.

Baca’s strength, in my opinion, is his amazing ability to describe people and places and to give us very vivid imagery. Here are just a few examples:

“We were feeling good about being free, staring out the window at chicks, until we arrived at our ‘hotel’ to find a squalid dope field’s den and seedy whorehouse with ex-cons sitting on lumpy, ragged sofas watching soaps on television in a foul-smelling, dingy lobby. We watned to turn around and walk out but we had no place to go. We handed the vouchers to a wrinkled, hunch-backed man at the desk, who was puffing on a cigar and playing poker with a floozy in a red miniskirt, pink fish-net stockings, and black stiletto heels. He tapped the coffee-stained black book… The woman batted her false eyelashes at Marcos, her makeup crumbling in chunks at the smile lines. Beneath her black wig, gray strands stuck out.” (56)

“We drove around. It was a decrepit, chalky town, dust and silence its main features. Dirt yards surrounded bricked-up dismantled car hulls. Chickens clawed the crusty dirt, and children scraped the hard ground to play games. Now and then noises rattled in the silence, loose tin shaped, and stray pack dogs emitted pained yelps. The town seemed weary of itself, every trace of life drained as it clung to the scantiest survival. Burros and roosters dozed in the shade of abandoned adobes beside cinder-block walls and stick houses buried in stickers and weeds.” (66-67)

“It was a white-washed hacienda with endless rooms enclosing a large courtyard. Parched palm trees and awnings kept the heat down but it still was oppressive; hot breezes whipped the sombrero brims of the groundskeepers. Brawny bodyguards with bull torsos and tattooed arms brooded with guns strapped around their huge guts. Antique ranch spurs and mule saddles were nailed to the exterior walls. Inside, wagon-wheel candle chandeliers hung from rusting chains. The red-brick floors had corded throw rugs at all doorways; see-through lace curtains covered the arched windows. The rooms were decorated with pre-Columbian gold figurines, Mayan and Aztec artifacts that Galvan boasted were sold to him by Mexican grave robbers. Several beautiful Mexican women floated around the place like dark swans against the white adobe.” (72-73)


There are a ton more examples throughout the memoir; every time he is in a new place, Baca gives us a paragraph of in-depth description like the ones above. He really does more than ground me in place – he makes places and the people in them come to life in a way that not many authors I’ve read can do.

Then other times, he’ll just simply state something and the shock value really works. An example of this is on page 191: “JJ and Snake were out for a shower, and when they saw the kid standing there all alone, they ripped his throat out with a homemade meat hook.”

He’s also really good at building tension, like on page 78 to 79 when he describes the boy trying to sell him cigarettes at La Zona. Or right before the heroin bust on 82-83.


Another thing that bugged me a bit was all the foreshadowing/fore-telling (is that a word?) that he gives us throughout the memoir. Such as on page 109 when he is describing all the different cell blocks in the prison and then says: “For various reasons, I would eventually visit all of them.”


I found the flashbacks to his happy childhood moments when he is in isolation incredibly boring. These are around page 133-153. I think this is because no conflict happens in these scenes and I wonder what they actually do for the story? I mean, I get that they’re telling us he did have happy moments as a child, but they pull me out of the story and are boring because nothing actually happens in them. As a fiction writer, I’ve always been taught that each scene needs to do something for the story and that stories without conflict don’t work and I can really see that being played out here. The whole time I was reading them, I was just waiting to get back to the prison. Then on 172, we get a weird structure where we go back there again and this time its in present tense. I’m not really sure why the author chose to do this?

Other moments I would have line edited:

-page 177 he’s talking about how the warden has sent him to the dungeon to punish him and he’s describing being led to the dungeon for the first time, stripped down to his boxers, chained by the guard, and then he says: “I felt scared.” Obviously. You’re already showing us this. By telling me, not only are you making me feel like you think I’m stupid and can’t get that already on my own, but it also immediately pulls me out of the story.

-page 194 when he is talking about how he got pulled out of the dungeon for a visitor, it says: “Surrounded with lovers, wives, and families, I felt anxious, disconnected, like a monk who has spent too long in a cell.” That is the worst simile I have ever heard. He HAS spent too long in a cell!

-page 230 he is talking about how all the lights are off and says “…the dark giving anonymity to voices cursing, joking, talking trash, and greasing the rumor mill.” Then the very next sentence it says: “you couldn’t see their faces, just hear their voices.” Thanks, captain obvious.


Anyway, I really did like a lot of this memoir – the story was incredible. I appreciated the tender moments and how he was always trying to do good, but just kept making bad decisions, and how he is at heart a romantic and really just wants a family. I liked the structure when his poetry and the letters were included, too.

-kris