There are many things in life that can transform a person. Jimmy Santiago Baca’s transformation came through prison and poetry. A Place to Stand is a memoir written by Baca to depict his life-long struggles. He starts it off by explaining his bumpy childhood and rough upbringing. He goes on to explain his incarceration, the struggles he faces while in the prison, and how he learns to make the days go by quicker and stay out of trouble until the day he is free. His tough prison life is turned around when he learns to read and write poetry. His poems, “I am Offering This Poem”, “Who Understands Me but Me”’ and “Immigrants in Our Own Land” convey the messages of character transformation that Baca depicts within his prison memoir A Place
