A Place To Stand

The Pushcart Prize–winning poet’s memoir of his criminal youth and years in prison: a “brave and heartbreaking” tale of triumph over brutal adversity (The Nation). Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “astonishing narrative” of his life before, during, and immediately after the years he spent in the maximum-security prison garnered tremendous critical acclaim. An important chronicle that “affirms the triumph of the human spirit,” it went on to win the prestigious 2001 International Prize (Arizona Daily Star). Long considered one of the best poets in America today, Baca was illiterate at the age of twenty-one when he was sentenced to five years in Florence State Prison for selling drugs in Arizona. This raw, unflinching memoir is the remarkable tale of how he emerged after his years in the penitentiary—much of it spent in isolation—with the ability to read and a passion for writing poetry. “Proof there is always hope in even the most desperate lives.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram “A hell of a book, quite literally. You won’t soon forget it.” —The San Diego U-T “This book will have a permanent place in American letters.” —Jim Harrison, New York Times–bestselling author of A Good Day to Die

"A Place to Stand, the wrenching memoir of Jimmy Santiago Baca, details how the written word helped him overcome a life of violence, bigotry, and crime. Now an internationally acclaimed writer and winner of the Pushcart Prize and American Book Award, Baca describes the extreme measures he took to survive on the street and in prison and how poetry became an essential element of his newfound sense of self.

In an extraordinary memoir, one of America's leading poets describes his youth in New Mexico, his troubled adolescence, his years as a drug dealer in Arizona and San Diego, and the personal redemption that occurred after he was arrested and sent to serve five to ten years in a maximum-security penitentiary.

Linguists have become increasingly interested in examining how class culture is socially constructed and maintained through spoken language. Julie Lindquist's examination of the linguistic ethnography of a working-class bar in Chicago is an important and original contribution to the field. She examines how regular patrons argue about political issues in order to create a group identity centered around political ideology. She also shows how their political arguments are actually a rhetorical genre, one which creates a delicate balance between group solidarity and individual identity, as well as a tenuous and ambivalent sense of class identity.

What stands between us and authoritarianism seems increasingly fragile. Democratic practices are under attack by foreign intrusion into elections; voter suppression restricts citizen participation. Nations are turning to autocratic leaders in the face of rapid social change. Democratic values and open society can only be preserved if citizens can discover and claim their voices. We access society through our organisations, yet the collective voices and irrationalities of these organisations do not currently offer clear pathways for individuals to locate themselves. How can we move through the mounting chaos of our social systems, through our multiple roles in groups and institutions, to find a voice that matters? What kind of perspective will allow institutional leaders to facilitate the discovery of active citizenship and support engagement? This book draws on psychodynamic systems thinking to offer a new understanding of the journey from being an individual to joining society as a citizen. With detailed stories, the steps – and the conscious and unconscious linkages – from being a family member, to entering outside groups, to taking up and making sense of institutional roles, illuminate the process of claiming the citizen role. With the help of leaders who recognise and utilise the dynamics of social systems, there may be hope for us as citizens to use our institutional experiences to discover a place to stand.

In her first book to focus solely on writing since her classic work "Writing Down the Bones," Goldberg reaffirms her status as one of the foremost teachers by redefining the practice of writing memoir.

Twelve--year-old Aisulu defies the expectations of her Kazakh family and tradition to train an eagle in order to save her brother, Serik, and prevent her family from giving up their nomadic life forever.

A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.