When I Was Puerto Rican

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: As a memoir, I thought this book was so beautifully written. I ate it up like I usually do good fiction. Though it was sequential, it flowed and didn't break my interest in the least. Really beautiful.

Rating:
Summary: An Absolute Terrific Book
Review: When I was Puerto Rican, by Esmeralda Santiago tells the story of a young girl struggling to get on with her life in Puerto Rico. As soon as she finally has started to get used to her life, she finds out that she is moving to the United States. And her life changes. The girl she has become in Puerto Rico is completely different from the girl she becomes in the United States.
I really liked this book. It is one of the best autobiographies I have ever read. It made me want to keep on reading more and more, and find out more about this young girl's life. It was extremely interesting and comprehensible. It was such a good book, and perfect for a teen reader. Santiago is a very good writer, and the superior quality of her work is shown in her book. She combines just the right amount of humor, drama, and reality a teen needs. I like how she shows the different stages of her life, from a little girl to a teenager. I like how she shows herself progressing. I also like how she shows Puerto Rican culture compared to American culture. I like how Santiago is able to make me feel as if I am there with her, because of her vivid explanations and fantastic storytelling methods. There is nothing that I did not like about this book. I loved every single aspect of it.
I recommend this book to any teen reader like myself. I am sure that the teen reader would be as interested as I was in reading the book. I also recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Puerto Rican culture. Esmeralda Santiago did an excellent job describing Puerto Rican culture. I recommend this book to anyone, in general, because it was a terrific book.


Rating:
Summary: Great Find!
Review: This summer I decided I wanted to read books by Latinas and fortunately I ran across When I was Puerto Rican. Though I am of Mexican descendent I totally related to a lot of the upbringing described in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and read it quickly. It may not be for all Latinas but I enjoyed the book so much I read the following booking Almost a Woman, which is a great continuation!

Rating:
Summary: Cool Book
Review: Esmeralda Santiago has an amazing facilty for descriptive prose and her language transports the reader into the world of her childhood memories most vividly. This book is one of the best coming of age stories I've ever read but it is also much more. Here is a young girl who is stuggling with family issues, feelings of abandonment and the other normal stresses of adolescence as she at first moves from rural to urban setting in Puerto Rico and then is finally ripped from the life she knows and is transported to an entirely new one in New York City.

This memoir of childhood is written in a beautiful almost poetic style and is an absolute pleasure to read. As an adult reader I loved it but I am also giving it to my teenage daughter to read as well since I think the story is inspirational as well as a realistic view into another culture. If I were a teacher this would be on my assigments list.

Rating:
Summary: Santiago dazzles in devastating, illuminating ethnic memoir
Review: One of the most difficult challenges facing a memoirist is the task of making her particular story resonate with universal truths. Esmeralda Santiago's "When I Was Puerto Rican" is a stunning success; it not only captures the dynamics of identity creation, does so in the context of ethnic, class and geographic tensions. Santiago's coming-of-age saga encompasses an incipient awareness of her unique status as an oldest daughter, conflicted thinker and anguished observer of family disintegration. That she writes without a drop of self-pity is remarkable given the abundance of sadness and betrayal which swirl in her story.

For much of her childhood in Puerto Rico and her early adolescence in New York City, Santiago lives a dual life. Possessed of a "stubborn pride," her "frightened self hid" behind a false veneer of acceptance that "everything was all right." At once proud and ashamed of her rural "jibaro" identity, Santiago grapples with exactly who and what she is. In this respect, "When I Was Puerto Rican" reverberates with the near-universal dynamic of identity creation, hidden shame at life's circumstances and constant questioning of how and why families created such tortured environments in which children evolve.

Plaguing Santiago is the ambiguous, tormented relationship between her mother and father. Exposed equally to the sounds of lovemaking and arguments, Santiago can neither be surprised that her parents never wed or the constant absence of her hard-working, poetic but irresponsible father. Eventually, the pressures of this quasi-marital status between Mami and Papi erupt, and Santiago saves her best writing for its description. As her mother and father savage each other in verbal warfare, "they growled words that made no sense." Their fighting echoes "all the hurts and insults, the dinners gone to waste, the women, the abandonments." As Santiago "crouched against the wall," she witnesses her parents "disfigure" themselves with anger. "In their passion Mami and Papi had forgotten" their children. They were real "only to one another." Santiago and her siblings cower in a corner, "afraid that if we left them, they might eat each other."

This authentic voice carries throughout the memoir as the author explores the various influences of her own existence. Nicknamed "Negi" by her parents due to her dark complexion, Santiago is acutely aware of her ethnicity and is perplexed upon her move to New York that people who look like her (African-Americans) have deep, unfounded suspicions about her and her people. As a Puerto Rican, she develops ambivalence about the United States and the American presence not only on her native island, but in her heart as well. How American will she become? At what cost? These are the same questions millions of immigrants have asked themselves as they immerse themselves in their new land. But how can she be "new" when Puerto Rico is and has been America for all of her life.

Though "When I Was Puerto Rican" treats Esmeralda Santiago's life during the 1950s and 1960s, it has a timeless feel to it. Moving, illuminating and compelling, this memoir does much more than describe one girl's emerging self; it invites us to explore our own past and examine the forces which have created our own identity.