Sites of Exclusion and Sites of Inclusion: Spatial and Environmental Liminalities in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Memoir Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Barrio Poet (1992)

Abstract

In a world-order articulated by a plethora of scientific/technological data, selfhood remains more elusive than ever. Identity-representation undergoes multiple and often overlapping metamorphoses, while the sense of self seems to be entangled in a constant rite to being, instead of aiming at a definitive crystallization. The aim of this paper is to explore sites of social interaction/control and the environmental liminalities arising at the interstices between subjugation and freedom (exclusion and inclusion). Jimmy Santiago Baca’s quasi autobiography Working in the Dark (1992) establishes the unnatural premises of a prison house as the locus for the birth of engaged poetry. This text rethinks the troubled relationship between Humans and Nature, and becomes powerful testimonials of discrimination and prejudice, as well as avowed commitments to an ethnic group’s struggle to transgress prescribed modes of existence.