Title/author: When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

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

Suggested Module/Thematic Use:
The United States and the Immigrant Experience
Stereotypes
Post-Colonialism

Author Biography: Esmeralda Santiago was born in Puerto Rico in 1954. Because of her unflagging determination, Ms Santiago was able to transcend her humble beginnings in rural Puerto Rico and her inauspicious move to Brooklyn, New York and eventually graduate with honors from Harvard University. She tells the story of her journey in a series of vignettes with humor and warmth.

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.

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

Genre: Autobiography/memoir

Length: 274 pages, including 4-page glossary of Spanish words/expressions

Availability:Paperback - http://www.amazon.com | http://www.bn.com | http://www.borders.com

Cost: $11.00

Commentary: A sensitive issue for some students may be that Esmeralda’s parents are not married and that Esmeralda’s father sometimes spends the night at the home of another woman with whom he has a child. The book also contains references to the first time Esmeralda menstruates.