Reader: Lisa Selensky

Respondent: Sara Dailey

Recorder: Amy Kaminski

12 November 2002

“So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs Away from Americans” 

By

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Unsettling America, pgs 115-116

Biographical Information

Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1952. His awards and honors include the Wallace Stevens Chair at Yale, the National Endowment Poetry Award, Vogelstein Foundation Award, National Hispanic Heritage Award, Berkeley Regents Award, Pushcart Prize, Southwest Book Award, American Book Award, and the International Prize.

Swept up in the narco-police madness that swirls in the barrios and ghettos of America, a nearly illiterate Baca went to jail in his early twenties and served hard, flat time, with no parole. Five years later, he emerged from prison a voracious reader and a skilled self-taught writer. Baca emerged from prison a passionate and critical voice for Contemporary American Poetry.

Course Objectives

1.      Objective 1b “Voiceless and Choiceless”

2.      Objective 3c Mexican American Alternative narrative, “The Ambivalent Minority”

3.      Objective 4 to register the minority dilemma of assimilation and resistance

4.      Objective 5a to discover the power of poetry and fiction to help “others” hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.

Angles of Interpretation

 The dominant culture fears the minority culture and that results in prejudice. 

The importance of the children and not the adults.

Style

Imagery, Metaphors, Narrative

Question

1.      What is the importance of the repetition of the words, “they’re taking our jobs away”?

2.      Baca speaks about the children numerous times, why do you think he repeatedly includes the children in the poem?

Class Discussion

(First question)

Gerry:  It's an Americanism to talk about people brought in, to say they take our jobs away.  He uses sarcastic tones for emphasis -- really they are anyone's jobs.  It's a prejudicial judgment and it's not true.

(Second question)

Gerry:  They have the kind of job that teenagers most have here.  They want ANY job.

Lisa:  They just want one pearl, not a whole necklace.  They just want one job to make a life for their families.  Americans don't care if children live or die.

Adelaide:  My son asked me, "Why do Mexicans have the hard jobs?"  They're a new group to hate.  You don't even see the children.

Christy:  If they don't have any better, how is it going to be better for the children?

Dr. White:  The kids sort of come out of nowhere.  In the third stanza the dominant culture is described as old people.

(Brief discussion of absence of any age between children and old people)

Lisa:  It ends with children to put emphasis on the future.

Gerry:  He talks about children because of the Mexicans' emphasis on family values.

Adelaide:  It reflects on the dominant culture.  They have a vibrant culture.  If you're white, where do you find your culture?  Wal-Mart.

Dr. White:  The population is getting older because health care is better, which is a fairly recent phenomena.  People here can live a long time.  That is modern, individualistic.  Mexican Americans have more invested in their children than Americans.  We try to get kids raised so we can get on with our lives, but traditional cultures look down on that.

Lisa:  The description of the turtle (American on television) Peter Jennings, contrasts Hispanic television host "Christina" in excitement level.