When I Was Puerto Rico By Esmeralda Santiago

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In the compelling novel When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, Santiago talks about her life experiencing childhood in Mucan, Puerto Rico, and to her prosperity as a New York City writer. In her adolescence she lived with her mother Ramona, dad Pablo, and her siblings Delsa and Norma. Later, her mom gives birth to three more siblings first younger brother, Hector, and then, Alicia, Raymond and Edna. Santiago and her siblings were always moving around because of her parent’s dysfunctional relationship and lack of stability of her dad's employment. In one of her parent’s arguments, she discovered that she had a half-sister named Margie who lived in New York. After returning home from school she learns that she will be moving to a house …show more content…

Eventually, hurricane Santa Clara hit and damaged the entire area forcing her mother to get a job at a factory as a seamstress. One day when Santiago was in charge of the kids, her brother Raymond while riding a bike with his cousin Jenny got his foot stuck in a bicycle chain. Ramona takes Raymond, along with the remainder of the children to New York. She seeks a foot specialist to check her son out because the doctor’s in Puerto Rico are continuing to talk about amputating his foot. When they got to New York, Santiago at first did not like the area. She describes it as “dark, forbidding, and hard” (218). However, the more she was there, the more accustom she got, and she found herself inside of a performing arts school where she excelled, and then accepted at the University of Harvard where she graduated with honors. This story gave me vivid imagery that helped me understand the landscape and the scenery of the different areas throughout the …show more content…

All of the description about the area of Puerto Rico and about the landscape. For example, when she was talking about the guava. “The ripe guava is a yellow, has a bumpy surface and has a thick edible skin. The guava bushes grow close to the ground, and the branches laden with green then yellow fruit that ripen over-night” (Santiago 3). Another example of descriptive language was when Santiago was discussing when she was attacked by the termite and how they felt crawling all over her body; “I screamed, imagining my skin disappearing in chunks into the mouths of hundreds of tiny black specks creeping into parts of my body I couldn’t even reach” (Santiago 11). As well as when they arrived in New York City “Rain had slicked the streets shiny, reflective tunnels lined with skyscrapers whose tops disappeared into the mist. Lampposts shed uneven silver circles of light whose edges faded to gray. An empty trash can chained to a parking meter banged and rolled side to side and its lid flipped and flapped in the wind like a kite on a short string”

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