Place to Stand (Baca)

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Place to Stand:

1. To what extent was Jimmy Santiago Baca's youth and young adulthood a result of a broken family? What kind of example does Jimmy's story offer for the nurture vs. nature argument?

2. How did the childcare and legal system fail Jimmy? To what degree was he...or was he not...responsible for his actions?

3. When he headed to prison at the age of 21, was there any reason to think he would become anything other than a hardened criminal? Were there hints that there might be another outcome for Jimmy?

4. Talk about Jimmy's steps toward redemption? What was the turning point or points? Who helped him along the way? What kind of qualities within Jimmy himself made the difference?

5. Jimmy pulls himself back from killing an inmate when he hears "the voices of Neruda and Lorca...praising life as sacred and challenging me: How can you kill and still be a poet?" Comment on that passage.

5. In what way did reading literature help Jimmy begin to heal? Same question for Jimmy's writing—how did it help him?

6. Talk about one of Jimmy's early poems: "I am Healing Earthquakes," in which he writes, "a man awakening to the day with a place to stand / And ground to defend." What is the significance of those lines?

6. In a larger sense, how does the written word have the power to remake the personal world? In your own experience, have you ever been moved deeply by reading poetry or prose—or by the process of your own writing—to rethink the way you live your life?

7. To what extent has this memoir opened your eyes to life in prison? What kind of life do prisoners endure? Is there a better system? If so, what would it be?

8. After his release, Jimmy attempted to reconcile with his family, only to witness more horror. How much can one individual endure? (This may or may not be a rhetorical question...it's up to you.)

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)


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