When I Was Puerto Rican

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.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Turtleback Books
Published: 02/28/2006
ISBN: 9780606148818
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.30w x 1.00d
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 20915 / When I Was Puerto Rican
Reading Level: 6 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 13