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Author Baca scheduled to share memoir’s message with Toledo youth
“A Place to Stand: Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Message to Youth” is part of a two-day public appearance in Baca’s first visit to Northwest Ohio. He is the featured guest at Authors! Authors!, presented by The Blade and organized by the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library at 7 p.m., Wednesday, October 2, 2013 in the McMaster Center at Main Library, 325 Michigan Street. Tickets are $10/$8 students and available at all library locations.
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Jimmy Santiago Baca
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The following morning, Oct. 3, at 11 a.m., Books 4 Buddies will sponsor Baca and host him at the Aurora González Community Center, where he will discuss the importance of literacy as inspiration to youth.“There are a lot more kids who are like I was than people think there are,” Baca told Books 4 Buddies officials. “The beautiful thing is that, somehow, some way, these kids are getting their hands on my books.”
Orphaned as a child, Baca drifted in and out of gang life and crime as a youth, until he found himself imprisoned in New Mexico on drug charges at age 21. In his book, Stories from the Edge, he describes the crossroads that he reached while grasping for inner freedom behind bars: “I paced my cell with a book in one hand and a knife under my mattress. I knew I could have a long and happy life with a book in my hand, or I could have a miserable, short life with the shank that was in the mattress.”
“A Place to Stand: Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Message to Youth” borrows its title from Baca’s critically acclaimed 2001 autobiography, A Place to Stand, which is scheduled to be released as a film in 2014. A winner of the Pushcart Prize and the American Book Award, Baca facilitates writing workshops in schools and prisons.
Youth from several Toledo Public Schools are scheduled to attend Baca’s October 3 presentation, sponsored by Books 4 Buddies and presented by the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library.
For additional information, call 1.866.944.1119.
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