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Essay on When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
Esmeralda Santiago's artful memoir ‘When I Was Puerto Rican’ recounts her childhood in rural Puerto Rico and her teenage years in New York City as she describes her move to New York from Puerto Rico and the changes she has to encounter. From Barrio to Harvard, Santiago remains humorous with a hyper-critical eye and shows the culture and customs she learns as she grows older.” The book is primarily an account of the maturing of an extraordinary woman who overcame barriers formed by hate, prejudice, cultural differences, puberty and heartaches to rise triumphantly”. (Web,1)
She uses Spanish sayings to relate to each chapter throughout the book and employs constant use of the local Puerto Rican language, words such as ‘jibaro’ and ‘cocotazo’ and it really provides an emphasis on her surrounding and creates a vibrant atmosphere where people can easily imagine how she must have felt and how its feels like to be in her place. Esmeralda Santiago uses the English language as a vibrant method of communicating what she wants to in a very eloquent and clear manner, one that is easy to understand and really captivating when reading the book and mixed with the Spanish, it is a unique concoction of vivid sensory detail.
From a rippled zinc shack in rural Puerto Rico to "the better life" in a decaying Brooklyn tenement, Esmeralda Santiago's Puerto Rican childhood is one of high comedy and a fiery war between the sexes. Hers is a portrait of a harsh but enchanted world that can never be reclaimed as she grew up in a male dominated society in “savage” conditions and often bound by superstitions that exist in the Puerto Rican culture, dutifully obeying her parents as they constantly move......
