Jimmy Santiago Baca's Coming Into Language

Empowerment through Language Do you take your language skills, typically learned in mandatory English classes, for granted? Jimmy Santiago Baca, Gareth Cook, and I certainly do not. Baca writes “Coming into Language,” to share his story of learning to read and write while being incarcerated in prison for drug possession. Whereas Cook, in spite of past experiences of shame and ridicule in school, tells his tale of being dyslexic by writing “Living with Dyslexia.” While I’m not an author I did grow up feeling isolated from people in my own age group and, due to a restless mind, developed insomnia in my early teenage years. Despite these differences, all of us went through hardships of forcing our minds to learn new material, growing up without

A few days later, using a pencil sharpened by his teeth, his first words came to life on paper and he felt that he must write poetry. Baca states that “I felt an island rising beneath my feet like the back of a whale,” to summarize how writing his first words at the age of twenty felt (154). When I write, my mind transcends into a different universe and I express emotions that I am unaware of even having; therefore, I can only imagine the power Baca felt on that day. Not settling for merely writing words, Baca furthered his talents with writing and was soon trading his poetry for smoke packs with fellow inmates. Baca felt hungry for more language skills, so much so that he refused to continue working at the prison until he was allowed a proper education. Consequently, soon after this declaration, in front of a review panel, he was transferred from a normal prison cell to one for the mentally disturbed. The next six months involved torture; meaning Baca was hassled and beaten by other inmates, overmedicated by staff, forced through shock therapy, and placed in solitary confinement so often that he became sluggish and unable to think. After these traumatic events Baca had again become surrounded by the darkness; despite sinking, again, he would soon float to the surface. Shortly after being allowed outside, for the first time in years, he regained his mental composure and desire to write. Baca wrote of the, “emotional butchery of prisons,” his frustration, fury, and sadness (155-57). Writing of my own rage or despair brings my mind to a place of calm; I was relieved to hear Baca found a way to channel his emotions and more importantly that he would not be in prison for a lifetime. He emerged from prison six years later from an experience most of us would believe only to be true in Stephen King’s