When I Was Puerto Rican Essay Questions

What is the significance of the title?

The title When I Was Puerto Rican is a reference to how much Esmeralda’s life and identity changed after she moved to New York as a teenager. The majority of the memoir depicts Esmeralda as a child in Puerto Rico. She describes with vividness both the joys and hardships of growing up in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is all Esmeralda knows as a child and her identity, language, and life experiences are deeply shaped by that. However, after she moves to New York with Ramona and her siblings, Esmeralda is forced to adapt to a new culture. Esmeralda is forever changed by this move, she becomes a product of both contexts: New York and Puerto Rico. The title is a reference to the process of acculturation, migration, and cultural identity.

How does life in Puerto Rico differ from that in Brooklyn for Esmeralda and her family?

Ramona moves the family to Brooklyn, New York in search of a better life. While Ramona is hopeful that life will be different in New York, Esmeralda is not so easily convinced. Materially, the family’s conditions improve. Esmeralda describes their first apartment in Brooklyn as the fanciest place she’s ever lived in. However, even in their poorest living conditions in Puerto Rico, there was a sense of community. Neighbors knew and supported one another, something the family does not experience in New York. In Brooklyn, the family is constantly afraid due to neighborhood violence; Esmeralda describes feeling a rush of fear anytime someone knocks on their door. Because of this violence, their freedom is greatly limited. Esmeralda and her siblings spend most of their time cooped up inside, a far cry from the freedom they had in Macún. However, there is something Esmeralda appreciates about their new life: a loosening of social norms. In Brooklyn, Esmeralda realizes that her outspokenness can be a benefit rather than a liability.

How does Esmeralda portray her parents? Does this change over the course of the memoir?

Esmeralda portrays her parents with love and complexity. In the beginning, Esmeralda describes Ramona as a harsh disciplinarian, quick to anger. As a young child, she feels more of an affinity with Pablo, who is more patient with her and shares Esmeralda’s love of Macún. However, as Esmeralda grows up, she begins to witness and understand more of the conflict between her parents. Esmeralda feels the pain of Pablo’s absences and grows to empathize with the difficult position Ramona is in. Esmeralda depicts her parents as two loving people trapped in an unhealthy cycle that consumes both them and their family. The older Esmeralda gets, the more she trusts in Ramona. Despite her brand of tough love, Ramona is a consistent presence in Esmeralda’s life, something that cannot be said about Pablo. Yet, regardless of his faults, Ramona reminds the children of the importance of having their father in their life.

What role does language play in the telling of Esmeralda’s life story?

While the book is written in English, Santiago chooses to include a fair amount of Spanish in the memoir. The epigraphs at the beginning of the chapters are in Spanish, and she includes a glossary of Spanish words that she uses throughout the memoir. The bilingual nature of the book is itself a reflection of the two cultures Santiago is a part of, Puerto Rican and American. There are certain words in Spanish whose full meaning cannot be captured in a simple translation; including them in Spanish adds authenticity to Santiago’s portrayal of Puerto Rican life and culture. It also puts the responsibility on the reader to learn about Santiago’s world, just as she was forced to do with American culture when she moved to the U.S. After moving to Brooklyn, Esmeralda had to learn English. Santiago chooses to spell English phonetically in Esmeralda’s dialogue so that the reader can hear her as she spoke at the time, with a heavy Puerto Rican accent. Santiago’s language choices add texture and vividness to the experiences of identity and migration that she explores in the memoir.

How do gender roles shape Esmeralda’s understanding of what it means to be a woman as she comes of age?

In When I Was Puerto Rican, women are defined by their relationships with men. Girls grow up to be wives, who take care of their husbands, the house, and their children. Those women who do not get married are divided into jamonas or putas. Jamonas are unmarried women, looked down on for being women who no man wanted. Putas, or whores, are women who flout society's rules: they embrace their sexuality, something only men are freely allowed to do in the Puerto Rico Esmeralda grows up in. Esmeralda is curious about these categories, and seeing how much Ramona suffers from Pablo’s infidelities and absences she wonders if it wouldn't be better to be a jamona than someone’s wife. At a young age, Esmeralda is taught that her body and sexuality are things she should protect and hide from men. The burden is put on girls and women to resist men's sexual advances, and Esmeralda’s interactions with boys and men in the memoir portray how men are taught to take from women as it suits their physical desires.