When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmerelda Santiago

When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmerelda Santiago

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.

Esmeralda Santiago is the author of the memoirs When I Was Puerto Rican, Nearly a Woman, and The Turkish Lover, as well as the novel America's Dream and a children's book, A Doll for Navidades, which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning film for PBS's Masterpiece Theatre. Her work has been featured in magazines such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Home & Garden, as well as on NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition. She was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently resides in New York. www.esmeraldasantiago.com is a website dedicated to Esmeralda Santos.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679756767
ISBN 10	0679756760
Title	When I Was Puerto Rican
Author	Esmerelda Santiago
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	1994-10-11
Number of pages	274
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.