Status
Available
Publication
New York : Vintage Books, 1994.
Description
[The author's] story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her warring parents and seven siblings led a life of uproar, but one full of love and tenderness as well. Growing up, Esmeralda learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of the tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But just when Esmeralda seemed to have learned everything, she was taken to New York City, where the rules - and the language - were bewilderingly different. How Esmeralda overcame adversity, won acceptance to New York City's High School of Performing Arts, and then went on to Harvard, where she graduated with highest honors, is a record of a tremendous journey by a truly remarkable woman.-BooksInPrint.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member janique
Esmeralda Santiago's story begin in rural Puerto Rico where her warring parents and seven siblings led a life of uproar but one full of love and tenderness as well.Growing up Esmeralda learned the proper way to eat a guava the sound of the tree frogs in the mango groves at night the taste of the
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delectable sausage called morcilla and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. Show Less
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
I loved this book beyond reason, but I admit for very personal reasons. This certainly resonated with me in ways someone without a Puerto Rican background wouldn't share, although that doesn't mean they wouldn't appreciate it. Just that my response to it was so personal I'm aware I didn't have an
In a lot of ways mind you Santiago and I are very different--you could say her experience is much closer to the experience of my mother than myself. It was my mother and her family that was born and raised in Puerto Rico. I'm a native New Yorker who has only spent a few brief vacations in Puerto Rico, the longest one entire summer when I was a child, even if it was an indelible experience. But when Santiago spoke of the morivivi plant and the coquis (tree frogs) and mango and coconut trees, it sure brought back memories of that magical summer. Nor did I grow up in Hispanic neighborhoods or close to our extended family--but in integrated neighborhoods and buildings. So there are times I think growing up I didn't have a full context for things that Santiago illuminated. For instance, I have called my aunt "Titi" for as long as I can remember. I thought it was my word for her. As it turns out it's what Santiago called her aunts as well. Mind you, I have to admit feeling a bit disappointed in that... And "jibaro"--it was funny how different our families saw the word. She translated it as "country person" and mostly took pride in it as an identity. In my family it was disparaging--the Puerto Rican equivalent of hillbilly or redneck and used as a comment on bad taste or a display of ignorance or "low class" behavior. And we never, ever used the word "gringo" in our household so when I first heard the word, I thought of it as something Mexicans said of Americans--not Puerto Ricans. I think that reflects another difference between us and our families. Santiago expressed at times an ambivalence, a resentment of how moving to the American mainland made her a "hybrid." My family never looked back. Not that they ever forgot where they came from or were ashamed of being Puerto Ricans--but above all we were proud of being Americans, and the opportunities that opened to us, and happy to adapt and assimilate. Well, mostly--goodness knows my aunt is not to be separated from her Puerto Rican foods or cooking. She wouldn't, like Santiago, express any ambivalence about grabbing a guava... (or avocado, mango, bacaloa, or ugh pig feet.)
I'd add that even if my reaction to this felt so personal, I couldn't help but note this was "objectively" a good read. Santiago's a good, good writer. This is a memoir that read like a novel--one of those works of "creative non-fiction" I feel somewhat ambivalent usually but was fine with here. I'd add that for all I compared this to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and is a coming of age story that follows Santiago from about ten to fourteen years old, I wouldn't call this a Young Adult work. It's frank in sexual content for one--not G-rated, I'd call this PG-13 at least--you'll even learn some Spanish curse words (if you didn't already know them)--so keep that in mind.
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objective response to it at all. It was hard to see Esmeralda Santiago when I was constantly thinking of my own family and what we shared in our experiences and attitudes and background and what we didn't. I guess this is to me what A Tree Grows in Brooklyn might be for someone with an Irish background--not that I didn't love that book as a teen myself. But I've found few works about the Hispanic American experience that I could identify with and like. (I despised the celebrated House on Mango Street by Cisneros for instance.)In a lot of ways mind you Santiago and I are very different--you could say her experience is much closer to the experience of my mother than myself. It was my mother and her family that was born and raised in Puerto Rico. I'm a native New Yorker who has only spent a few brief vacations in Puerto Rico, the longest one entire summer when I was a child, even if it was an indelible experience. But when Santiago spoke of the morivivi plant and the coquis (tree frogs) and mango and coconut trees, it sure brought back memories of that magical summer. Nor did I grow up in Hispanic neighborhoods or close to our extended family--but in integrated neighborhoods and buildings. So there are times I think growing up I didn't have a full context for things that Santiago illuminated. For instance, I have called my aunt "Titi" for as long as I can remember. I thought it was my word for her. As it turns out it's what Santiago called her aunts as well. Mind you, I have to admit feeling a bit disappointed in that... And "jibaro"--it was funny how different our families saw the word. She translated it as "country person" and mostly took pride in it as an identity. In my family it was disparaging--the Puerto Rican equivalent of hillbilly or redneck and used as a comment on bad taste or a display of ignorance or "low class" behavior. And we never, ever used the word "gringo" in our household so when I first heard the word, I thought of it as something Mexicans said of Americans--not Puerto Ricans. I think that reflects another difference between us and our families. Santiago expressed at times an ambivalence, a resentment of how moving to the American mainland made her a "hybrid." My family never looked back. Not that they ever forgot where they came from or were ashamed of being Puerto Ricans--but above all we were proud of being Americans, and the opportunities that opened to us, and happy to adapt and assimilate. Well, mostly--goodness knows my aunt is not to be separated from her Puerto Rican foods or cooking. She wouldn't, like Santiago, express any ambivalence about grabbing a guava... (or avocado, mango, bacaloa, or ugh pig feet.)
I'd add that even if my reaction to this felt so personal, I couldn't help but note this was "objectively" a good read. Santiago's a good, good writer. This is a memoir that read like a novel--one of those works of "creative non-fiction" I feel somewhat ambivalent usually but was fine with here. I'd add that for all I compared this to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and is a coming of age story that follows Santiago from about ten to fourteen years old, I wouldn't call this a Young Adult work. It's frank in sexual content for one--not G-rated, I'd call this PG-13 at least--you'll even learn some Spanish curse words (if you didn't already know them)--so keep that in mind.
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LibraryThing member EricaKline
Growing up in Puerto Rico. Good, interesting slice-of-life.
LibraryThing member allison.sivak
A very sensory book. Santiago layers themes with stories and recurring images that deepened my pleasure in and feeling for this book. Very physical use of detail, and a successful and authoritative writing of the child's experiences while keeping the woman's reflection on her experiences. Beautiful.
LibraryThing member mamibunny
I love this book & story. It really was a bit of an eye-opener to what it was like growing up Hispanic during that era.
LibraryThing member psychedelicmicrobus
A beautifully written memoir. I like Ms. Santiago's style- it's very everyday and conversational. It reminds me of listening to my father-in-law's stories of growing up in Puerto Rico as a young boy. As another reviewer pointed out, very few lives naturally have the story arc that a well-crafted
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novel would generally have, so the memoir is episodic and a little scatter-brained, but I think that this is not a bad thing. I think it fits, seeing as how this is a book about the first thirteen or fourteen years of Ms. Santiago's life, and many people do not have solid memories of their childhood- my memories of my own childhood are also scattered. I tend to only remember the really big, earth-shaking things. That seems to be true for a lot of people. Memories in general tend to be staccato bursts, and I think this is a memoir that illustrates that perfectly. It's honest, written conversationally, and casual, like a favorite auntie telling stories. It is not pretentious. It's not written with lots of gigantic words to impress the reader. It's very down-to-earth, and it's wonderful. Show Less
LibraryThing member Booklover217
"Con la musica por dentro"...with the music inside...perfectly describes Negi the main protagonist in Esmeralda's Santiago's memoir When I Was Puerto Rican. I read this one with as a buddy read with @idleutopia_reads and some other awesome bookstagrammers and it couldn't have come at a more perfect
From the moment I started reading this I knew that Negi and I shared the same spirit: the spirit of a fighter, one who questions everything, one who challenges authority and makes her own rules and her own space in an uber masculine world that seeks to break you. No matter what tragedy happened, she just pushed through and it fueled her determination to save herself from her circumstances. My mother used to tell me I had " la musica por dentro" and I never understood what it meant. All I knew was that I was sensitive to people's pain but I was also a rebel who could not be tamed or silenced.
There are books that come into your life that give you glimpses of your younger self, your journey, your homeland and more importantly your beloved culture and ancestry. Representation in books is far and in between but this one spoke to me deeply on a visceral level. It transported me to Puerto Rico and places that I loved to visit as little girl. It brought back memories of my grandparents and it also gave me snippets of what my mother's life was like when she first moved to NYC. I gave me some new history about my neighborhood and made me feel more connected to my Puerto Rican roots. It gave me new insight into my own parents' experiences and it provided validation for their own migration stories.
This book touched me in so many ways that I can't help but cry and smile at the same time. The little girl in me that was just like Negi has found reconciliation and newfound pride in the pages. Negi's story is one that I will revisit over and over because it reminded me that the undying fire that lives inside of me burns for a reason. I am reminded who I fight for every day. Thank you Esmeralda Santiago for sharing your life with the world. I am forever grateful.
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time. From the moment I started reading this I knew that Negi and I shared the same spirit: the spirit of a fighter, one who questions everything, one who challenges authority and makes her own rules and her own space in an uber masculine world that seeks to break you. No matter what tragedy happened, she just pushed through and it fueled her determination to save herself from her circumstances. My mother used to tell me I had " la musica por dentro" and I never understood what it meant. All I knew was that I was sensitive to people's pain but I was also a rebel who could not be tamed or silenced.
There are books that come into your life that give you glimpses of your younger self, your journey, your homeland and more importantly your beloved culture and ancestry. Representation in books is far and in between but this one spoke to me deeply on a visceral level. It transported me to Puerto Rico and places that I loved to visit as little girl. It brought back memories of my grandparents and it also gave me snippets of what my mother's life was like when she first moved to NYC. I gave me some new history about my neighborhood and made me feel more connected to my Puerto Rican roots. It gave me new insight into my own parents' experiences and it provided validation for their own migration stories.
This book touched me in so many ways that I can't help but cry and smile at the same time. The little girl in me that was just like Negi has found reconciliation and newfound pride in the pages. Negi's story is one that I will revisit over and over because it reminded me that the undying fire that lives inside of me burns for a reason. I am reminded who I fight for every day. Thank you Esmeralda Santiago for sharing your life with the world. I am forever grateful.
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LibraryThing member goosecap
This was very cool to read, but difficult to review. I guess it’s because she’s a woman of color…. they called her Negi in her family, because they found her dark, which kinda means Blackie or Black girl, negra would be Black girl, although some of her family was more pale; Hispanic heritage
And there’s certainly a lot to be knocked over by, waves and waves of gender and conflict, waves of expectations and customs and conformity, although again it’s not like she’s Marilyn Frye or even Simone de Beauvoir, angry or sarcastic or whatever, (not that that has to necessarily be always bad). It’s hard to review though. At one point I was going to write about her parents’ marriage, and the way people punish each other, the way I get you to treat me even more poorly to punish you for treating me a way I don’t like…. But it’s odd because she’s a woman of color. Gender roles are not timeless or borderless, but nevertheless gender lends itself to a certain universalism because woman and man are not ethnic terms; even the animals some of us eat have gender. But for myself and people like me, when we imagine a universal or quasi-universal gendered scenario, we basically imagine white people, you know. So I don’t know. Of course, sometimes things ARE less different than we might hastily assume; baby boomer Puerto Ricans were told to be ‘well behaved’ by their elders, and rebelled against being repressed or whatever; they weren’t a universally sexually loose or non-uptight Hispanic heritage people like we might so easily assume. But I don’t know. You read most Anglo psychology books, for example, and the people tend to have Anglo names and are basically assumed to be white, and in that larger context we try to wrestle with gender and say what The Girl and The Guy or This Guy and That Girl want, behave, say, do, etc, and it’s like, I don’t know. Better a functional Anglo than a psycho one; I don’t want to press the point too far, but how do you tackle gender without the invisible context of Anglo-ness?
I really don’t know what to say about it, even after having read someone feel their own way through the forest, or across the sea, I guess, lol.
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people tend to be more mixed and fluid about color than classic North Americans, although obviously it’s *Latin* America because it was colonized by Europeans too…. Negi was an affectionate term, though; I almost thought she was white Latina from looking at her until at the end I read that that’s not how Americans perceived her…. But anyway, yeah, she’s from the imperial territory of Puerto Rico, lol—she doesn’t Chomsky you with the theory, just the experience of how they were not considered the same or equal; and she wasn’t white…. Although it’s not the only, or even the main, thing she talks about. She’s a woman of color, but the emphasis is on being a woman, or, because she’s a child, ‘almost a woman’, casi señorita….And there’s certainly a lot to be knocked over by, waves and waves of gender and conflict, waves of expectations and customs and conformity, although again it’s not like she’s Marilyn Frye or even Simone de Beauvoir, angry or sarcastic or whatever, (not that that has to necessarily be always bad). It’s hard to review though. At one point I was going to write about her parents’ marriage, and the way people punish each other, the way I get you to treat me even more poorly to punish you for treating me a way I don’t like…. But it’s odd because she’s a woman of color. Gender roles are not timeless or borderless, but nevertheless gender lends itself to a certain universalism because woman and man are not ethnic terms; even the animals some of us eat have gender. But for myself and people like me, when we imagine a universal or quasi-universal gendered scenario, we basically imagine white people, you know. So I don’t know. Of course, sometimes things ARE less different than we might hastily assume; baby boomer Puerto Ricans were told to be ‘well behaved’ by their elders, and rebelled against being repressed or whatever; they weren’t a universally sexually loose or non-uptight Hispanic heritage people like we might so easily assume. But I don’t know. You read most Anglo psychology books, for example, and the people tend to have Anglo names and are basically assumed to be white, and in that larger context we try to wrestle with gender and say what The Girl and The Guy or This Guy and That Girl want, behave, say, do, etc, and it’s like, I don’t know. Better a functional Anglo than a psycho one; I don’t want to press the point too far, but how do you tackle gender without the invisible context of Anglo-ness?
I really don’t know what to say about it, even after having read someone feel their own way through the forest, or across the sea, I guess, lol.
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