When I was Puerto Rican starts with a four year old Esmeralda Santiago or Negi moving to Mancún. Negi the oldest out of all her brothers and sisters lives everyday with her parents` unstable relationship, taking care of her siblings, and growing up in a rural community of humble means. As Negi grows up she struggles against becoming a señorita in an uptight and traditionalist Puerto Rican community.
Because of her parents’ unstable relationship her mother makes them move away from their father from time to time, when this happens they usually move to the city were Negi does not fit in and is called a jibara by her classmates.
Her family’s economic situation forces Negi’s mother to take a job at a local factory, something very uncommon for women to do at that time; the other women in town look at Negi’s mother differently. Being the oldest of seven Negi is forced to grow up a lot faster than the rest of her brothers and sisters, having to help take care of her siblings and run a home.
One day Raymond, one of Negi’s youngest brothers suffers from a biking accident and is left with a very badly injured foot. Negi`s mom takes him to see as many doctors as she can and when that is not enough she takes the whole family to the city for him to be able to be treated by specialists
In the city the family of nine lives in a small room behind a bar, after a while Negi`s mom goes to New York with Raymond for him to be seen by doctors. Negi is left at her uncle`s house were she has to peel potatoes all day. When her mother comes back from New York, she has changed, she now wears high heels paints her nails, and has cut her hair; she is a woman from the city. Negi feels like she is losing her mom to the men that shout out compliments at her while walking down the street and to her brothers and sisters, her mom is not just her mom anymore.
Throughout the memoir Negi faces and comes to understand the topic of love and sexuality in the Puerto Rican culture. She experiences the normal teenage issues. Like every other teenager she dreams of the fairytale stories and handsome men in the novelas at the same time that she deals with school crushes. She also comes to understand her parents’ tough love towards each other.
When Negi is thirteen her mother decides to take Edna, Raymond, and Negi with her to live in New York, the rest of her siblings Delsa, Norma, Hector, and Alicia stay with their father until they have enough money to bring them to New York. Negi`s mother separates from her father completely and permanently. When they get to New York they meet their grandmother from their mother`s side, Tata, Don Julio, Tata`s friend (boyfriend), and Chico, Tata’s brother, for the fist time. The three of them have a drinking problem.
In New York, Negi sees for the fist time people different from the normal Puerto Rican for the first time, she sees Jews, Italians, and the many different social and racial separations in the Brooklyn of the 50`s. When she goes to school she fight to not get put back a grade because of her low level English. She studies as hard as she can becomes one of the people with the highest grades of her grade. At school Negi doesn`t find any friends; she doesn’t fit in with the all American group, the Italians, the Puerto Ricans that are trying to forget Puerto Rico, or the Puerto Ricans that hate being in the United States; she feels completely lonely.
After a while Negi`s mother falls in love with Francisco one of their neighbors. He moves in to live with them and Negi`s mother gets pregnant. A few months later Francisco is diagnosed with cancer and a few months after that he passes away.
When the rest of her siblings arrive to New York, Negi finds out that her father had married shortly after they left and had scattered the kids around between family members. Her and her siblings feel resentment towards their father but their mother, makes them keep in touch and assures them he still loves them; this shows Negi how even though her parents do not love each other they respect and care for one another. Negi`s mother becomes like father and mother to them.
A few years later Negi’s guidance counselor at school suggest she try out for a school of Performing Arts. Negi prepares herself for the audition memorizing a monologue. Weeks later she auditions at Performing Arts and gets in to the acting program. She graduates from Performing Art and becomes a scholarship student at Harvard; accomplishing her goal of getting out of Brooklyn.
One of the lines I love is:
“The guava joins its sisters…. I push my cart away, toward the apples and pears of my adulthood, their nearly seedless ripeness predictable and bittersweet.” (Pg.4)
I love this line because I think it really shows the meaning of the title of this book. It shows that even though, Esmeralda (Negi) misses and still loves the Puerto Rico of her childhood, she is not the Puerto Rican thirteen year-old girl that left for New York anymore. Her culture is now a mixture of the two cultures.
I loved this book. I really liked the way the author was able to tell her story with rawness yet in a beautiful way. I loved how Esmeralda Santiago described the Puerto Rican culture. I also loved this book because it tells a story that anyone living in a foreign country can relate to.
