When I was a Puerto Rican-Book Review

When I was a Puerto Rican-Book Review

Introduction

This delightful narrative is about a young Puerto Rican girl Esmeralda Santiago and her transition from Puerto Rico to a very different world of New York City. In this book, she describes her life in Puerto Rico where she experienced the beauty of the place as well as poverty of her family. The books also describe the family relations and the difficult relations between her parents. She writes about her family in which she has described her mother Ramona as a very hard working woman, her errant father Pablo and their love-hate relationship. This story is about a strong family and their survival after immigrating to New York. How they coped up with a very different life style, language and cultural barriers.

This book gives an insight about the life of thousands of Puerto Rican people who migrated to United States in the 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s, looking for better opportunities. The problems, the difficulties immigrants faced after coming to the US, which a subject of intense debate in the United States. Currently there are thousands of the immigrants who are illegal, even the ones who are legal have to face extreme hardships just in order to survive. Immigrants faces the issues of finding work, as well as their children have to face a lot of problems in adjusting to their new life style (www.readinggroupguides.com).

Discussion

The preface of the book starts with a very simple comparison of a fruit guava which the author Esmeralda discovered in the New York market and the ones she found back in Puerto Rico. The guavas made her recall her childhood and the life she had spent in Puerto Rico. The guavas of Puerto Rico had a much better taste as compared to the guavas of New York (Reyes, 2013).

The book starts with Esmeralda Santiago being of only four years old and moving to a Zinc house in Macún. The first chapter mainly focuses on the living conditions of Negi (her nick name) that she had to go through in her childhood. She lived in a Zinc house which had a dirt floor, a mother who was always angry and harsh with her for being oldest of children and then a father who was never around, who would disappear for days without an end. Her mother and father were not married, and they would constantly fight with each other. She lived in very poor economic conditions. Santiago lived her childhood with hardships, loneliness and poverty. Since the beginning of the story, it is shown that Negi's mother repeatedly nags her. As a young child, she loved to do work for her father, but her mother disapproved this. She preferred that Negi would help around the house chores with her. Even though her mother behaving this way with her, but she still wanted the best for her daughter the best for all of her children. She wanted to provide them with a very good ...