Titles:

1. The Immigrant Experience and School
2. The Immigrant Experience and Work

Materials: excerpts from When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

Genre: Autobiography/memoir

Target Audience: Middle School (grade 8) or High School

Publication Information: New York: Vintage 1994 - ISBN 0-679-75676-0

Availability: Paperback ($11.00) - http://www.amazon.com | http://www.bn.com | http://www.borders.com

General Summary: Esmeralda Santiago’s picaresque memoir, When I Was Puerto Rican, is a story about identity. Ostensibly the story of one six-year-old girl’s coming of age in Puerto Rico beginning in 1954 through her new life in New York in the 1960s, it is also the reader’s story. Santiago reveals the layers of her developing, and sometimes conflicting, identities as daughter, sister, student, female, Puerto-Rican-American and individual. While readers may have had experiences entirely different from Ms. Santiago’s, they will nonetheless find themselves nodding in recognition as her story unfolds. The author takes the reader on a journey from Santiago’s humble beginnings in Puerto Rico to her eventual graduation with honors from Harvard University with wit and warmth.

Vocabulary: Before beginning lessons, see Appendix E: Alienation and Initiation as a Theme and the Immigrant Experience (http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/AXE.HTML).

Mini Lesson #1: The Immigrant Experience and School (pp. 224-230)

Instructional Objective: The student will be able to explain how American communities receive immigrants by explaining how “alienation” and “initiation” function as themes in the school setting.

Summary of Excerpt: Newly arrived in Brooklyn, Esmeralda and her mother attempt to register Esmeralda for the eighth grade. Mami speaks little English, so Esmeralda has to do her best to translate in “broken” English. The principal initially wants to put Esmeralda back in the seventh grade until she learns English better. Esmeralda argues that she was an A student in Puerto Rico and eventually convinces the principal to allow her to enter eighth grade. Esmeralda’s victory is short-lived for she soon learns that her class, 8-23, is among the lowest ability groups in the eighth grade.

Guiding questions addressed in this excerpt:

1. Is coming to the United States of America good for the immigrant?
2. What are the rights of non-citizen immigrants?

Additional questions suggested by this excerpt:

1. How are recent immigrants received by more established immigrant groups?
2. How are newly-arrived Puerto Ricans received by Puerto Rican Americans born in the United States to Puerto Rican parents? What accounts for the tension between these groups?

Activities: (To be completed before reading excerpt)

1. Journal Topic: Write about a time when you entered a new school for the first time. How did you feel? How did the students/teacher treat you? What did you expect? To what extent were your expectations met? (If students have never moved to a new city, state, country, ask them to write about the transition from elementary to middle school, from middle school to high school, from private school to public school, or vice versa).
2. After students write, have them share/compare responses with a partner and then have a whole class discussion. Make a T-chart listing positive and negative experiences on the board.
3. Closure: How are your experiences similar to/different from those of an immigrant? To what extent does an immigrant’s treatment depend upon his/her country of origin?

Mini Lesson #2: The Immigrant Experience and Work (pp. 245-247)

Instructional Objective: The student will be able to explain how the immigrant’s American Dream is formed by explaining how “suffering” and “reconciliation” function as themes in relation to work experiences.

Summary of Excerpt: Mami finds a job as a thread cutter in a factory in Manhattan. In Puerto Rico she had been a machine operator, but must “prove [herself] all over again” (246). Although she is proud of her work, Mami does not want Esmeralda and her siblings to follow in her footsteps.

Guiding questions addressed in this excerpt:

1. Is coming to the United States of America good for the immigrant?
2. Is immigration good for the United States of America?
3. Do immigrants benefit economically by coming to the United States of America?

Activities: (After reading/discussing excerpt)

1. Interview family members, friends, neighbors, or other members of the community who have immigrated to this country.

Possible Questions:

1. What jobs did they have at home? What jobs here? What is most difficult about finding work here: language barrier, skills, education, pride (not wanting to take a job that is beneath you, but being forced to in order to survive), prejudice, etc.? How do you cope? How does this relate to immigrant’s American dream? How does this compare to dreams of American nationals?
2. Journal topic: What is the correlation between hard work and getting ahead? Is it the same for American nationals and for immigrants? Explain.
3. If any students in class have family members who have immigrated, invite them in to speak about their experiences finding work.
4. Keep a journal in which you (a) cut out newspaper articles regarding U.S. policy regarding immigrants and work, (b) describe television programs/movies dealing with this issue, or (c) describe what you observe in your community. Each journal entry should contain your reaction/comments. At the end of __________ (time frame) bring your journals to class for discussion.

See also, Lesson Plans relating to the memoir as a whole.