Criticism > Poetry > Baca, Jimmy Santiago - Robert Franklin Gish (essay date 1996)

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Robert Franklin Gish (essay date 1996)

SOURCE: Gish, Robert Franklin. “Jimmy Santiago Baca: Writing the Borderlands of Ethnic and Cultural Crisis.” In Beyond Bounds: Cross-Cultural Essays on Anglo, American-Indian & Chicano Literature, pp. 145-50. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

[In the following essay, Gish concentrates on Baca's efforts to cross cultural and ethnic boundaries as a writer.]

“Language made bridges of fire between me and everything I saw. Writing bridged my divided life of prisoner and free man.”

—Jimmy Santiago Baca, Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio

Few contemporary authors write and live across as many ethnic, cultural, and genre boundaries as Jimmy Santiago Baca. Consider his artistic, cultural, and ethnic identities and roles—each defined by its own set of expected and established boundaries that Baca continues to...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ron Arias (review date 1982)
   2. Michael Hogan (review date 1983)
   3. Liam Rector (review date 1988)
   4. Julián Olivares (essay date 1988)
   5. Scott Slovic (review date 1991)
   6. Jimmy Santiago Baca (essay date 1992)
   7. Jimmy Santiago Baca and John Keene (interview date 1993)
   8. Robert Franklin Gish (essay date 1996)
   9. George Moore (essay date 1998)
   10. Publishers Weekly (review date 2001)
   11. Donna Seaman (review date 2001)
   12. Jimmy Santiago Baca and Elizabeth Farnsworth (interview date 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. How to Analyze a Poem
2. Poetry