C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans : Dream Boy's Story

In C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans poet Jimmy Santiago Baca takes us on a guided tour of the darkest corners of a brutal, unjust world.
C-train is a series of episodes from the life of Dream-boy, a young man who finds himself seduced, and later enslaved, by the siren song of cocaine. Part paean to the delicious power of intoxication, part lament for those hopelessly under its power, C-Train is a ride its hero, and the reader, struggles to get off. In Thirteen Mexicans, Baca writes of the Chicano community and the gulf between the American dream and American reality. He portrays the raw beauty of life in the barrio, and the surreal, stomach-turning moment when people of color must confront how they are reflected in the distorted mirror of white society.