COLLEGE PARK, MD (November, 2014) A special preview screening of A Place to Stand, a documentary chronicling the life of writer Jimmy Santiago Baca, will be shown this Friday at Stamp Student Union. The film is based on the memoir of the same name by Mr. Baca, who will be present at the screening to talk about his books and sign copies for attendees.
Told through interviews with the author and his family, friends, and peers, A Place to Stand follows Bacas path from Estancia, New Mexico where he lived with his indigenous grandparents through childhood abandonment, adolescent drug dealing, and a subsequent five-year narcotics sentence at Arizona State Prison in Florence, one of the most violent prisons in the country. Baca survived the inhumanity of his incarceration by exploring deep within, discovering poetry at his souls core. Through the life-changing capacity of poetry, writing, and the arts, he stepped away from the violence and negativity around him, healing the wounds of his childhood and opening himself to a new future.
Baca's extraordinary life is both inspiring and haunting, simultaneously an indictment of our current criminal justice system and a model of the potential for human transformation.
A Place to Stand will screen this Friday, November 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Charles Carroll Room at Stamp Student Union. The showing is made possible through support from the College of Education; the Department of Counseling, Higher Education and Special Education; the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean for Undergraduate Studies; the Honors College; and the Center for Literacy and Comparative Studies. For more information, please contact Dr. Peter Leone at mleonep@umd.edu.
Click here to learn more about the documentary A Place to Stand.
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