Immigrants in Our Own Land by Jimmy Santiago Baca
"Immigrants in Our Own Land" by Jimmy Santiago Baca is a poignant exploration of the experiences of individuals, particularly focusing on prison inmates and the broader implications of identity and oppression. The work features a blend of prose poems and free-verse poetry that reflect Baca's personal experiences while incarcerated, highlighting themes of suffering, resilience, and solidarity among inmates. The poems convey a sense of alienation and struggle, yet also emphasize the strength and hope that can emerge from hardship. Baca's writing draws connections between the prison experience and the historical marginalization of Chicanos, suggesting that the injustices faced by inmates mirror the broader societal challenges confronted by Mexican Americans. The collection is notable for its emotional depth, addressing not only the pain of incarceration but also the healing process that comes from shared experiences and community. Its exploration of identity resonates with contemporary discussions surrounding immigration and cultural belonging, making it a significant piece in understanding the complexities of American society.
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Immigrants in Our Own Land by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1979
Type of work: Poetry
The Work
Immigrants in Our Own Land provides samples of Baca’s early work, which is indeed prosy. The collection includes a number of so-called prose poems, description divided into prose paragraphs. Other poems are in free-verse lines. In both kinds of poems, however, the description is somewhat flat, including too much direct statement and metaphors which are commonplace or trite.
Similarly, the point of view in the poems is limited. Centered on Baca’s prison experience, the poems dwell on the plight of the inmates—on how Baca and the other inmates are ground down—but there is remarkably little concern with how they got there in the first place. It is as if readers are to assume that all these men are victims of mistakes and injustices. Baca may have even thought so at the time; he repeatedly expresses his solidarity with the other inmates and condemns the forces that oppress them.
The point of view, however limited, does have a positive side: “This is suffering, pain, anguish, and loneliness,/ but also strength, hope, faith, love, it gives a man/ those secret properties of the Spirit, that make a man a man.” There is a determination in Baca to endure and remain “strong enough to love you,/ love myself and feel good.” Despite harassment—in “It’s Going to Be a Cold Winter,” new guards ransack Baca’s cell and subject him to a strip search—a healing process occurs, encouraged by the passing time, moments of quietness, the prison routine, and a new warden who brings reforms and new activities, including “a poetry workshop where the death house had been.”
In “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans,” perhaps the best poem in the volume, Baca also extends his sympathies outside the prison. He reaches out to feel solidarity with poor Mexicans whose children are starving and to mock the economic fears of complacent, overfed “gringos”:
Mexicans are taking our jobs, they say instead.
The volume’s title poem, “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” is also effective. It presents prison as a kind of reverse Ellis Island, where convicts are processed into a new land of “rehabilitation” that proves to be illusory. The title also seems to allude to Chicanos whose families have lived in the Southwest since the original Spanish land grant, but who are sometimes still treated like immigrants, legal or illegal. The poem thus connects prison to the Chicano situation, with the prison experience becoming a metaphor for the denial of Chicano land, language, culture, and identity.
Bibliography
Coppola, Vincent. “The Moon in Jimmy Baca.” Esquire 119 (June, 1993): 48-52.
Fuss, Adam. “Jimmy Santiago Baca.” BOMB 84 (Summer, 2003): 58-63.
Harris, Marie, and Kathleen Aguero, eds. A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
Keene, John.“’Poetry Is What We Speak to Each Other’: An Interview with Jimmy Santiago Baca.” Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters 17 (Winter, 1994): 33-51.
Levertov, Denise. Introduction to Martín: &, Meditations on the South Valley. New York: New Directions, 1987.
Lynch, Tom. “Toward a Symbiosis of Ecology and Justice: Water and Land Conflicts in Frank Waters, John Nichols, and Jimmy Santiago Baca.” Western American Literature 37 (Winter, 2003): 405-428.
Meléndez, Gabriel. “Carrying the Magic of His People’s Heart: An Interview with Jimmy Santiago Baca.” The Americas Review 19 (Winter, 1991): 64-86.
Moore, George. “Beyond Cultural Dialogues: Identities in the Interstices of Culture in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Martín and Meditations on the South Valley.” Western American Literature 33 (Summer, 1998): 153-177.
Olivares, Julián. “Two Contemporary Chicano Verse Chronicles.” The Americas Review: A Review of Hispanic Literature and Art of the USA 16, nos. 3/4 (Fall/Winter, 1988): 214-231.
Shirley, Carl R., and Paula W. Shirley. Understanding Chicano Literature. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.
Stahura, Barbara. “The Progressive Interview: Jimmy Santiago Baca.” Progressive 67 (January, 2003): 26-30.