When I Was Puerto Rican: A New Identity
In a previous blog post, Kill Jane Austen, I wrote about wanting to read more Latino authors and finding a memoir by Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican, published in 1993. I was immediately intrigued because my mom is Puerto Rican, born and raised, so I hoped to learn more about what it was like to grow up on the island. In the memoir, Santiago chronicles her childhood in Puerto Rico, living with her parents and siblings from the age of four to fourteen when her mother moves them to Brooklyn, New York. She continues her life account in two sequels forming a trilogy: Almost a Woman and The Turkish Lover. Reading this memoir, I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did, but the writing was so good I didn’t want to put the book down.
I was impressed with Santiago’s writing from the first page, which is all it usually takes to tell if a book is good. I was eager for moments in Esmeralda’s childhood— who was nicknamed Negi short for Negrita—that would foreshadow her writing career. I saw glimpses of Esmeralda’s storytelling abilities when she sat her siblings down to tell them a story, enchanting even the adults. But what really led this young Puerto Rican girl to writing was her sheer intelligence. I was so impressed with Esmeralda’s story of moving from Puerto Rico as a teenager to Brooklyn, New York, a new state in a country she’s never been to, doesn’t speak the language, or understand the customs. Not only does she learn the language quickly, but she aspires to be an actress. She works diligently in her preparation for her audition at an alternative school, Performing Arts High School in Manhattan and gets in. Her dreams of leaving Brooklyn for Manhattan made me wonder if we always have to leave home to make our dreams come true. Even though we don’t see it in the book, Esmeralda eventually goes off to Harvard!
When I Was Puerto Rican is a coming of age story that takes you on a young girl’s journey. Esmeralda learns what it means to be a señorita all while watching her parents love and fight when they lived in Puerto Rico. There’s also the dangers of being a woman under the male gaze as we witness Esmeralda in a few incidents of violation. I read that the author liked to tell stories for women, and in reading this memoir I know it’s true. Esmeralda details her life up until the age of 14, therefore, so much of her story is cocooned inside her mother’s. We watch through Negi’s eyes her father intermittently abandon their family, leaving them for days or weeks at a time after a fight with mami, leaving her mother to find work to provide for their family relegating babysitting duties to the eldest, Esmeralda. Santiago shows the strength and perseverance of a woman, that she is different from a man, physically unable to desert her babies, making damn sure they don’t starve to death. It’s her mom who decides to take them out of Puerto Rico for more opportunities in America like living in a home with electricity. Like she tells Negi after receiving good marks in school, “That’s what you have to do in this country. Anyone willing to work hard can get ahead.”
As I was reading, I was impressed by how inviting Santiago’s autobiography was; it’s an ordinary account of a young woman coming into her own, but Santiago is so good at writing that I couldn’t stop turning the page. I was fascinated by Esmeralda’s upbringing in Puerto Rico with her big family along with her subsequent exodus to the United States. She’s also relatable as she’s incredibly close to her parents and loves her siblings as much as she fights with them, pushing off her chores onto them the way only a bossy elder sister can. Being the oldest myself I related to the privilege she feels in doing whatever she wants. In the opening chapter, we see a feisty Negi talking back to her mother because she wants to follow her father as he removes floorboards from their new house revealing dirt floors, which meant scorpions and snakes could crawl into the house, after moving to Macún in Puerto Rico. Home, displacement, belonging, and identity are all themes in this story: Esmeralda is always arriving somewhere new, which as any experience does, shapes and changes her the way puberty changes an adolescent’s body. Esmeralda is moved around a lot whether it’s moving with her entire family around the island into a new home or staying with relatives for weeks while mami goes to New York with Negi’s brother to see specialists. I think this instability of not having her parents around all the time, and the separation from her siblings, forces her to grow up and gives her the level-headed maturity she presents at such a young age. Her ability to adjust to new circumstances is what prepares her for her big move to America where she continues discovering who she is.
Negi does lament being stuck inside her Brooklyn apartment, because of her mother’s fears of the dangers that loom outside, which made me realize just how much she gave up when she left the island. I’m from the East Coast, so I only know cold weather when winter hits, but Esmeralda was only familiar with Puerto Rico’s tropical climate where she was used to being outside surrounded by nature feeling the rays of the perennial sun on her face. It seemed so bleak to me to exchange the beaches and mango trees for concrete pavements and seasonal weather. I was curious about the title of Santiago’s memoir as it places her Puerto Rican identity in the past tense—how does someone stop being Puerto Rican? I thought about my mom who left Puerto Rico at 17 after her mother passed away to live with her older brother and sister in Passaic, New Jersey. Was she no longer Puerto Rican because she had left? After I finished the book I asked my mom if she missed Puerto Rico. No, she said, because she has now lived more than half her life in the U.S. Well, I asked her, how did it feel when you left Puerto Rico? Didn’t you miss the warm weather? Oh, yes, of course, she replied, remembering.
I’ve been obsessed with hearing my mom’s childhood stories from Puerto Rico ranging from playing with her siblings freely around her neighborhood and beaches to sneaking out of her grandmother’s house with her cousin as teens to go dancing. These stories shaped her just like Esmeralda’s life in Puerto Rico shaped her narrative. She didn’t stop being Puerto Rican when her mother upended her entire life and moved her to a new country, just like my mom hasn’t stopped being Puerto Rican, but Esmeralda did gain a new identity as she was becoming a new person, her knowledge expanding as she took in her different surroundings. On her first day of school in New York they hold her back by placing her in seventh grade when she should be in eighth so that she can take English as a Second Language, which they did to any student who arrived from another country. This infuriates Negi. She takes it upon herself to read everything she can and picks up the language quickly even serving as interpreter for her mother at the welfare office. It is this brilliant intelligence and fierce determination not to let anyone literally hold her back that makes her such an engaging character whose life you want to follow long after you turn the last page. I look forward to reading Santiago’s other works.