A Place to Stand Essay

Can words change person’s thoughts from desperation, violence, to peace and normality within a dehumanizing prison? Some prisoners spending short to long term sentenced, sometimes lose themselves in a world of violence and become worse off when coming into the prison system, than how they used to be before prison life. Trying to hold on to any bit of sanity or respect for humanity becomes an everyday struggle. Sometimes the smallest thing can help prevent the feeling, of going over that edge of no return from a dreadfulness act of death.
Jimmy Santiago Baca lived a life surrounded by misfortunes and inescapable pathways of loss. He was the youngest of three. Addiction was introduced to him as a young child through his father who bestowed upon him, the burden of dealing with the issues of having an alcoholic parent. The fathers obsessive drinking cased Jimmys’ mom to leave his dad. His mother Cecilia later abounded all three of her children leaving them at their grandparents’ house. The introduction of Deception came in to play when she stated while dropping them off that she’d be right back. She had eloped with a white man named Richard. Richard had made his mother bleach her hair and change her name to Sheila. He did this to hide her ethnicity which shamed him.
After the miss fortune of Jimmy’s grandfathers’ death, he was sent to an orphanage. During his stay there he witnesses a stabbing in the dining room. One kid had stabbed another in the neck. Seeing the unemotional reaction from the other kids witness this act was an introduction to a dehumanizing environment surprisingly to know of such an existents he stated,” if I stayed here long enough, I too would be trained to feel nothing. After being stripped of everything, all these kids had left was pride—a pride that was distorted, maimed, twisted, and turned against them, a defiant pride that did not allow them to admit that they were human beings and had been hurt.” Jimmys residence here was not to long.