When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother's Quest

(Paperback)

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Poet-activist Jimmy Baca immerses the reader in an epic narrative poem, imagining the experience of motherhood in the context of immigration, family separation, and ICE raids on the Southern border. Jimmy Santiago Baca makes the immigration crisis painfully personal in this new interpretation of the Epic Poem. While it may feel safest to take a step back when the government calls to "build that wall," Baca steps forward into the lives of those who suffer profoundly at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. In language we can all understand, Baca sends us on a journey with Sophia, an El Salvadorian mother searching for a better life. She takes step after painful step up a mountain of obstacles, carrying with her the burden of all that has come before- past her husband's murder, through her searing grief, to the wrenching separation from her young son at the border, then rape and abuse at the hands of American officials; always onward, exhaustively. "I keep walking/carrying you in my thoughts," she wills her boy, so far away, to know she is coming. When I Walk Through That Door, I Am is a call for our attention, for our compassion, for our energy in pursuit of democracy and of justice. Jimmy Santiago Baca shines this light on America's downtrodden, and asks us to walk through their pain with them. "They don't see/democracy's body/on the barbwire," he writes. Through this book we do.

Reviews

This slim, salient volume will open readers eyes wide to the true human stories behind blaring headlines about immigration policies and debates.
Booklist, Starred Review

Incredibly emotive and beautifully written, When I Walk Through That Door, I Am is a must read.
Bustle

Jimmy Bacas new book brilliantly reimagines the epic poemand reshapes the epic hero as a young immigrant woman struggling to escape violence and find the child that has been torn away from her. A work that speaks strikingly and passionately of our times.
Richard Blanco, inaugural poet and author of How to Love a Country

[Baca] writes with unconcealed passion . . . both an intense lyricism and transformative vision.
Denise Levertov

[Bacas] voice, brutal and tender, is unique in America.
Ilan Stavans, The Nation

What makes [Bacas poetry] a success is its honesty, a brutal honesty, as well as his original imagery and the passion of his writing.
Gary Soto, The San Francisco Chronicle

To read Jimmy Santiago Bacas poetry is to tramp across the uneven terrain of human experience, sometimes lulled by the everydayness of work or relationships, and then dazzled by a flood of emotion or vibrant observation.
Western American Literature

Author Bio

Jimmy Santiago Baca is an American poet, teacher, and activist of Apache and Chicano descent, and holds a number of awards for his easily accessible writing style and activism. He is the author of A Place to Stand, which was developed into a documentary film about his life, airing on PBS.