Almost a Woman

Rating:
Summary: Boring; tedious; read only if you have nothing else to read
Review: "Almost A Woman," the "sequel" to the well-written "When I Was Puerto Rican," is boring, tedious, and only recommended to hardcore fans of the first memoir from Esmeralda Santiago (and even then, your patience might wear thin on this one). While the first book, written with descriptive details and passionate voice, shows us the insights into young Esmeralda growing up poor in Puerto Rico, "Almost A Woman" is filled with uneventful happenings that won't draw the reader in as much as the first book. "My Boring Recollection of When I Became a Young Lady" would have been a better title for this book, and one wonders what the point was behind writing it in the first place. You won't come away feeling satisfied with what happens to the "characters," nor will you care halfway in. The first book captured you: you wanted to know about Esmeralda and her family; why her father did what he did; her childhood in Puerto Rico and its effect and lasting impression on her. The first book is "must reading" if you were/are an immigrant from any backround. In "Almost...", you read about Esmeralda in the US as a young lady: going on audtions; contemplating who she will give her virginity to; her future and what pain it will bring to her overprotective mother. This isn't, unfortunately, a "must read" for young ladies, or anyone who wants a good read, for that matter. This book is a huge disappointment, considering how good Santiago's first memoir was. It's useless, senseless reading and only if you have nothing else to read will you even bother wanting to read towards the end (which I might add, is predictably as boring and senseless as the rest of the book).

Rating:
Summary: Totally imposible to put down and easy to read.
Review: I have become a big Santiago fan ever since I read "When I was Puerto Rican" as one of my summer readings. "Almost a Woman" is a wonderful work of art. It is easy to undersand and easy to read. In one hour I read two chapters and in one week I finished the whole book, even though I had a lot of homework to do. I was totally hooked. I wish Esmeralda luck. She has become my first and only favorite author.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a Woman: Almost impossible to put down
Review: I highly recommend the book to anyone who read and loved "When I was Puerto Rican". It contines Santiago's journey as a young woman in New York where she recounts her double life -- one foot in Brooklyn speaking Spanish with her close-knit Puerto Rican family, and the other foot in Manhattan, speaking accent-less English while trying to become an actress and find love.

The book is beautifully written and well paced. I recommend it especially to anyone who is first-generation American -- the places and culture may be different from your experience, but the issues are the same.

Rating:
Summary: A memoir about an immigrant coming of age in New York City
Review: I loved Santiago's first book (When I Was Puerto Rican) and I love this one too. Almost a Woman is a memoir about coming of age in New York City. It is also about the struggle to find her own identity among a large family and a domineering but loving mother. Even though I am not an immigrant or Puerto Rican I found this book very compelling and hard to put down. I only hope Santiago will write a third memoir so I can find out how she gets to Harvard, what happens to her mother, brothers and sisters, if she sees her father again and what happens to her lover. Santiago has become one of my favorite authors!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic, so great I read it with a flashlight!
Review: I received this book last week after hurricane George hit our beautiful island and I could not put it down. I loved reading "When I was a Puerto Rican", but this one I enjoyed so much more. It was great reading about her change from child to woman. I come from a family of seven children, I am the oldest and I identified with her, specially the way they wanted us to marry in church but we don't visit church and things like that. I live very close to her "barrio Macum", I visited it and told some of the people their that they had to read her book. Esmeralda Santiago describes her upbringing with such candor that I even imagine her story in a movie or mini-series.

Rating:
Summary: NOT AS GOOD AS THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY!!: IN FACT, HORRIBLE!!
Review: This is the biography from Esmeralda Santiago that starts off where WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN ends off. That is where the comparison/connection ends, because this book is horrible compared to Santiago's first biography. To sum up one part of the book that really sums up the whole: There is one "big" event that happens in this book (won't give it away) and it's 272 pages leading up to it, and when it finally happens, ONE PAGE (and barely that, it's more like half a page) is devoted to describing it. Does that make any sense? Other events are given twenty pages to describe it, and the "big" moment for Santiago gets one page? The talented way Santiago describes her whereabouts and experiences are happily evident on her first biography; in ALMOST A WOMAN, they are almost non-existent. This biography is flat, empty, boring, and just plain stupid. Hard to believe the person who wrote it also wrote the first biography.