The study of autobiography is also connected to an author’s quest for voice. Autobiography allows writers to define themselves as individuals; distinct from those images fostered by society or by cultural stereotypes.5 Knowing Santiago’s background, a reader could infer that her purposes for writing When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman are similar. Santiago, as a young Latino immigrant in New York City who was relocated against her own will and understanding, searched for images, stories, experiences that she could relate to. In her autobiography, Santiago creates a voice for other Latino children and adults to witness. She combats the idea that a woman’s voice, especially a Latino woman’s voice, is insignificant. For a writer, she proves that nothing is too minor to be woven into a memoir – no incident is too small – because all experiences shape who we are and who we become. We all have a story to tell. We all want people to value what we’ve done. We all want to help others with what we’ve learned. Santiago allows the reader to connect to each of these ideas in her memoir.
In the novel, Santiago reveals her family’s honor for education and for their own culture. She teaches her readers to celebrate and accept who they are today as well as whom they are becoming – an idea of inspiration for young people struggling with identity. Because of its confidential and intimate nature, autobiography also allows a writer to examine difficult memories, thoughts, feelings and underlying concerns such as sexual identity and power. The novel become the author’s own truth-telling experiment. Several issues lend themselves to be revealed in autobiographical works and are elements in When I Was Puerto Rican.
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Bringing Social Issues to Light
Writers of autobiography tend to bring to light the connections between work, social class, education and inequality. These connections are an important aspect of Santiago’s autobiography. Autobiography gains much of its drama from a writer’s attempt to use the story - her voice - to come to terms with experience and gain self-acceptance. As witnesses of private dialogues and personal experiences, young readers are given a model for self-acceptance and catharsis. In the novel, Esmeralda Santiago reflects most frequently on the issues of identity and family relationships.
Recalling that many autobiographies provide great stories to address the concept of rite of passage, Esmeralda’s struggles include those that lead her to question her identity – as a girl, a daughter, a student, a friend. As the novel provides a journey through various rites of passage, the movement from childhood to adulthood is marked by many different experiences. She gains a new awareness of cultural identity as American customs are introduced and she eventually moves to America. She learns the complexity of relationship among family members and especially between men and women through witnessing her parents’ struggles. Her identity as a young woman, however, is also measured as she awaits becoming “Senorita.” In the novel, “senorita” signifies starting the menstrual cycle, and for Negi, signifies another period of change for her. Moral issues such as having to worry about men’s advances and pregnancy once she becomes senorita connect Negi to the larger community. She identifies herself not only by how she feels but also by how she is seen by others. In this sense, the novel allows students to think about both physical and psychological rites of passage.
Cultural identity is one of the most important themes throughout the novel. It is introduced at the start of the novel when Santiago is shopping in a New York City bodega, and the sight and smell of guava fruit attracts her attention. Another significant experience when Santiago became aware of her cultural identity was when the Puerto Ricans of Santiago’s community in Macun were introduced to American customs. She titles the chapter, “The American Invasion of Macun” and describes Americans who visited to teach the Puerto Ricans about health and hygiene and to provided the families with American food. Describing her first experience eating scrambled eggs, for example, Santiago says with poignant humor,
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“I . . . dipped my spoon into the gelatinous hill, which was firmer than I expected. It was warm and gave off that peculiar odor I’d smelled coming in. It tasted like the cardboard covers of our primers, salty, dry, fibrous, but not as satisfyingly chewy. If these were ever once eggs, it had been a long time since they’d been inside a hen.” 6
Esmeralda’s initial images of Americans are shaped by these experiences. In the voice of a child, Negi describes her impressions in great detail. Her brutal honesty, while is humorous, reveals her great love for home. Once in America, she confronts prejudice and discrimination on a deeper level. For example, when she is registering for school, the administration decides she should begin in the alternative class for kids who can’t succeed in regular classes. Because of her lack of knowledge in English, she was judged as less intelligent and less able than an average student. As she describes each detail of these experiences Santiago celebrates the capacity of the human spirit when confronted with adversity. When asked to attend seventh grade instead of eighth grade, Esmeralda responded to the school administrator with the following solution,
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“ “Seben gray?” I asked Mr. Grant, pointing at his big numbers, and he nodded.
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“I no guan seben gray. I eight gray. I teeneyer.”
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“You don’t speak English,” he said. “You have to go to seventh grade while you are learning.”
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“I have A’s in school Puerto Rico. I lern good. I no seven gray girl.”
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“Meester Grant,” I said, seezing the moment, “I go to eight gray six mons. Eef I no lern inglish, I go to seven gray. Okay?”
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“That’s not the way we do things here,” he said, hesitating.
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“I good studen. I lern queek. You see notes . . . I pass seven gray.”
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“You have until Christmas,” he said.”7
Needless to say, Santiago succeeded and went on to graduate from the New York Performing Arts High School. Complicating Santiago’s initial experience even further, however, there were other Spanish and immigrant communities who were unaccepting of the new Latino arrivals. It was through education that many Latinos (and Esmeralda Santiago) gained a stronger footing in mainstream America. Santiago’s novel further helps improve the situation for Latino immigrants as she reveals much of the ethnic and racial prejudice immigrants endure.
Family is one of the most enduring topics of literature and cultural studies. The universal relationships among family members provide a basis for common experiences, emotions and perceptions. Analyzing one’s relationships with others also requires an author and reader to examine aspects of one’s personality that may have been shaped through the influence of other people.
In her NCTE speech, Esmeralda Santiago also discussed her parents’ reaction to the novel. To her, and our, surprise, her father was proud to be the villain of her novel. Her mother claimed the novel was more about her than it was about Esmeralda. While the audience laughed at these anecdotes, it was clear that Esmeralda’s parents recognized her purpose. Her father apparently read the book using a Spanish/English dictionary when it was first published in English. What was his immediate response? Esmeralda tells the audience he said the book was for all young couples who want to be parents – to show the role they play in their children’s lives.
When I Was Puerto Rican can be viewed as a story of many lives really - the lives of Esmeralda and her family. Her experiences seem to amplify her mother’s struggles, and Esmeralda’s interpretations of experiences are the result of her mother’s life of loss and longing and her father’s frequent absences. In addition, as one would expect, her awareness of culture was shaped by what she learned from her parents and the relationships she witnessed at home.
One example of a theme related to family in the novel is that of men as sinverguenzas. This term, Esmeralda learns, means that men had no shame in indulging in behavior that caused women much suffering. Her father often acted as a sinverguenza, because he refused to marry Esmeralda’s mother. It was also common knowledge that he visited what Esmeralda called a “puta”. She says,
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“Putas, I guessed, lived in luxury in the city on the money that
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sinverguenza husbands did not bring home to their long-
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suffering wives and barefoot children. Putas wore lots of perfume,
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jewelry, dresses low cut to show off their breasts, high heels to
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pump up their calves, and hairspray. . .. I wanted to see a puta
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close up, to understand the power she had over men, to understand
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the sweet-smelling spell she wove around the husbands, brothers,
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and sons of the women whose voices cracked with pain, defeat
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and simmering anger.” 8
In the NCTE speech, she discussed her intention of addressing many social issues through her autobiography and of providing other Latinos with inspiration and personal connections. Included in this discussion, however, was her analysis of what happened as a result of the novel. Santiago was in the midst of a new cultural conflict – she was criticized for the novel’s title and ultimately for her transition into mainstream American culture.
When When I Was Puerto Rican was published in English, and later published in Spanish, she was viewed (even by her own family) as less than 100% Puerto Rican. As difficult as this was for her to endure, she states, “How funny – Puerto Rico IS America. But it’s the experiences that change you anyway.” Some Latinos claimed she was ‘contaminated’ by Americanism. Others said she had lost her ‘cultural purity.’ She was viewed as a traitor to her culture. Santiago openly admitted that experience changed her, as it would anyone. In an interview she once said, “I felt as Puerto Rican as when I left the island.”8
In reading the novel, students and teachers alike may want to discuss whether or not Santiago lost her Puerto Rican purity, because the entire novel is about a child’s search for identity. This child underwent so many changes and transitions, it is obvious that she was shaped by all of them. Therefore, one might question, if she was searching for identity from the start of the novel, and identity might mean, as a child, as a young woman, as a daughter, as a Puerto Rican, etc. - was she ever purely Puerto Rican to begin with? In the novel, she is just figuring out what this means to her.
Mini Lesson
Discuss the irony of the title, When I Was Puerto Rican. When was Esmeralda purely Puerto Rican in the novel? Can the readers identify at what point Esmeralda started to become less Puerto Rican to be able to say, “when I was?” Ask students to work together to list the different ways Esmeralda experiences identity in conflict (some examples are listed below). Upon completion, students may work in small groups to debate which side of the conflict Santiago appears to favor in the novel. Students should search for examples from the novel to support their interpretation.
(a) Is she black or white?
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(c) Is she American or Puerto Rican?
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(b) Is she urban or rural?
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(d) Is she “her mother’s daughter” or her father’s
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Santiago’s Voice as a Child, Adult and Latino
The main focus of an analysis of voice in this unit is to look at the shifting voices present in the novel. The novel is told through the point of view of a child. Esmeralda, called Negi, is the main narrative voice. In certain instances, however, the voice of the author, Esmeralda Santiago as an adult, is revealed. It is clear, upon close reading, that Santiago speaks from the perspective of a child when she recreates experiences from her childhood. Within these chapters, however, she effectively blends the perspective of an adult who, as she looks at her own memoirs, has reached a new understanding about her experiences. Toward the end of the novel, a clear Latino voice emerges as she struggles with the transition into her new life as an immigrant.
From a rhetorical perspective, the use of voice in the novel seems to serve two purposes: first, it provides a range of viewpoints toward the experiences presented and second, it denies the reader from relating too closely with any one aspect of the characterization. Santiago’s use of different voices is clearly a consciously chosen narrative technique, because the blend of perspectives is very subtle. In fact, the technique works tremendously to allow many readers to identify with the main character at various points in the novel (through the different voices presented), and it seems to aid the reader’s analysis of the author’s reliability.
The use of plural voices seems to represent a plural consciousness – Santiago can be reminiscing about the past and include shifts into the present. She can see events from various perspectives and therefore, so can the reader, providing more entry points for readers to find connections to the characters and their experiences. In analyzing this aspect of voice in class, students should attempt to identify where the voice shifts. This is a major element in analyzing the author’s narrative technique. To shift voices so implicitly requires great narrative control and is indicative of a finely crafted narrative style.
Mini Lesson
Ask students to identify experiences that they can relate to in the novel and categorize them according to Esmeralda’s various perspectives. Indicate if you relate to her perspective as (a) a child or teenager, (b) as a girl, (c) as a daughter or son, (d) as a sibling, (e) as a student in school, (f) as a Puerto Rican or other ethnicity, (g) as a newcomer to a community, etc. Share the results in class discussion or ask students to write autobiographical essays.
In many ways, When I Was Puerto Rican provides a new definition for autobiography, because Santiago communicates that the novel isn’t really only about her. It is a crafted work of art that spans many primary years of Esmeralda Santiago’s life. It is a novel with a purpose, an exercise in self-exploration, identity and culture and a model of successful narrative. The novel reads easily and holds the reader’s attention to every last word, but the novel is anything but uncomplicated. The elements of narrative, theme and social importance in the novel make it an irreplaceable addition to English curriculum.