Jimmy Santiago Baca Quotes

• Literacy is freedom, and everyone has something significant to say.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Literacy, Significant

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• The whole thing is this: If you don't use just basic grammar, if you don't get the language down, you're not going to have access to a tool that people use as a weapon against you. The only reason I was never taught to read and write was because it was easier for them to lead me. But the second I learned to read and write, I began to lead myself.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Inspirational, Reading, Writing

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• I am learning to look at myself differently, to see the scattered remnants of hope and dreams and collect them again.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Dream, Looks, Remnants

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• Every poem is an infant labored into birth and I am drenched with sweating effort, tired from the pain and hurt of being a man, in the poem I transform myself into a woman.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Hurt, Pain, Tired

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• You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Native American, Deserve You, Giving

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• I can't stand the comfort zone. So many people I know, their parents give them their homes, and they get married and have children, or whatever. That's it. They don't ever go beyond that. That's not what life is.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Children, Home, People

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• Being a human being without forgiveness is like being a guitarist without fingers or being the diva without a tongue.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Forgiveness, Tongue, Fingers

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• I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Clouds, Sight, Air

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• How much truth can we bear? Our tolerance for carrying the truth is not very high. I mean, the slightest discomfort about truth and we run to our refuge of our jobs and our schools and our friends who keep supporting our blindness.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Correr, Trabajos, Escuela

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to get in there and not accept the constant failure of prisons to deal with racism, lack of privilege, and impoverishment - not accept any of that. Just get in there!

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Believe, Responsibility, Racism

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• We're all self-destructive when we're young. We all rebel. If we don't, there's something wrong. But when a Chicano kid's in a rebellious state, he has nowhere to go but to put himself in jeopardy with the police. When a kid who has some class privilege rebels, he's in a beautiful room and he can buy these horrible CDs and drugs. He's buffered from being a criminal.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Beautiful, Kids, Self

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• I emerged from the black oil pools in the forgotten house of dreams in the wild backcountry of the heart. I am heir to the sun, child of Mother Earth and the Mayan galaxy. All the mountain cures and healing waters and winds and junipers run deep in my bloodstream.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Mother, Running, Dream

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• And so I pray I am today as honest with myself, with life all around me and below and above me, with all who I encounter.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Today, Encounters, Honest

  Jimmy Santiago Baca (2004). “Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande”, p.8, New Directions Publishing

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• I sat back in my wooden chair as they signed the paperwork and stared down at the arm rests, studying the various layers of paint, the chips and cracks. How many hands had gripped them? I wondered. What lives were attached to those hands, what dreams were shattered, what sorrows were they trying to squeeze out of their souls?

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Dream, Hands, Soul

  Jimmy Santiago Baca (2007). “A Place to Stand”, p.102, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Americans would have a right to go to war with the Iraqis if we could name one author from Iraq. It disturbs me that we're going to war with somebody we know absolutely nothing about. Name one Iraqi poet, one Iraqi woman activist, one Iraqi singer. Name one Iraqi novelist. You can't. And how can you go kill someone you don't know anything about?

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Guerra, Nombres, Irak

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• Understanding is the key to everything. To rage, fear, love. If you understand a situation, it's going to make you mad. Or it's going to make you feel fearful. If any of us even had a clue as to what Bush and those people were up to, we'd be running stark crazy mad out of fear.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Running, Crazy, Keys

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a world that's so far from what the Palestinian children are going through, it's unbelievable. Yet if we dare to get close to that atrocity and name it, it would shock us so badly we couldn't live in our privileged comfort zone.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Children, Names, America

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• People say what distinguishes us from the animals is that we think. Well, then why the hell don't we extend some compassion to those under tremendous duress? There's this whole idea that you work really hard so you can deaden your soul to the universe and enjoy yourself only in ways the Sierra Club will let you. But what about enjoying yourself by getting into the whole melee of poverty and racism and violence and murder and drug addiction? Get in there, roll up your sleeves, and do something! Nobody does it.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Compassion, Animal, Thinking

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• I do know that if you can name certain things and understand them, it allows you to make better choices. Unfortunately, there's so much misinformation that towers over a person's head, it's really difficult to make the right decisions. Consequently, we just go along because it's way too hard to sift through the information.

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Names, Choices, Decision

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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