When I Was Puerto Rican is a 1993 autobiography written by Puerto Rican native Esmeralda Santiago.

It is the first of three installments, followed by Almost a Woman and The Turkish Lover. This first book
begins by describing Santiago's life in Macún, a sector of Candelaria barrio in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.
When I was a Puerto Rican
Esmeralda Santiago recalls her life as a youngster in Puerto Rico. As a child she lives with her
mother Ramona, father Pablo, and younger sisters Delsa and Norma. She recalls the birth of her
first younger brother, Hector, and then the other siblings, Alicia, Raymond and Edna. Her parents
are often angry with each other and her mother sometimes takes the children and moves in order
to escape the relationship.
Eventually, Ramona begins working at a factory and the children are left with a neighbor. When
Gloria runs off to be married, Ramona is unable to work for several days until Gloria's return.
Eventually, Ramona says that she can't really rely on anyone other than the family and tells
Esmeralda that she's going to have to be more responsible with regard to helping with the children
and the housework. Esmeralda chaffs under the load but does her best, hating the chores and
the monotony but does a great deal of work. One day, Esmeralda's cousin Jenny gets a new
bicycle and begins taking the children for rides. When Raymond, who is very young, insists and
Jenny overrides Esmeralda's demand that her siblings come home, Jenny takes off with Raymond
on her bike. Raymond's foot is mangled in the chain of the bike and he's taken to the hospital.
Esmeralda feels responsible though everyone agrees that it's Jenny who was in the wrong.
Raymond's foot continues to be a problem and the doctors begin talking amputation which
prompts Ramona to take him to New York in an effort to find better medical treatment. Esmeralda
is left behind with cousins and is angry, not at being left but at being left out of her mother's plans.
Ramona soon makes another trip to New York and this time returns with a new hairdo, new
clothes and a new sense of confidence. Esmeralda's father soon tells her that Ramona is planning
to move to New York. Ramona takes there of the children, Esmeralda, Raymond and Edna, and
saves for plane fare for the remaining four. Ramona becomes involved with another man,
Francisco, who fathers a child and dies of cancer.
Esmeralda hates her life in New York, saying that she misses the nature of Puerto Rico. She
hates the fact that there is so much crime in the city that she is seldom allowed away from the
house alone and that all the children are kept cooped up inside most of the time.
Esmeralda is asked by a school official what she wants to do and she gives it some thought,
eventually gaining some help gaining admittance into a school for performing arts. In the Epilogue,
Esmeralda reveals that she was admitted to that school, that she graduated there and was, at the
time of the writing, preparing for graduation from Harvard.
In the epilogue, the reader learns that Negi went on to study at Harvard, while in the prologue,
Negi laments the loss of her Puerto Rican identity as she studies guavas in the grocery store.
This juxtaposition of a major success with a sense of cultural loss suggests that even though Negi
eventually experiences outward success, the process of constructing her identity is an ongoing
and difficult one, and one that she'll struggle with continually as she seeks to reconcile her
childhood desire to be a jíbara with her American educational successes as an adult.
Theme: Identity

Negi is constantly questioning her identity, even before the move from Puerto Rico to
Brooklyn causes her to have a full identity crisis. She wonders how or where she fits into her
world, since her world is constantly changing, undefined, or uncertain, and she struggles to
construct her identity when parts of her identity are unreliable or don't make sense.
When Negi is seven or eight, she begins to question Papi about what a soul is, coming to the
conclusion that her soul is the part of her that she often notices walking beside her or watching
her during highly emotional events. These out of body experiences represent a physical
manifestation of Negi's split identity. By conceptualizing her soul as something simultaneously
separate from her body and a part of it, Negi is able to more productively consider the different
states of being that make up her identity.

Theme: Coming of age

When I Was Puerto Rican follows Negi from age 4 to 14, from early childhood to the beginnings
of puberty. As the oldest sibling, Negi is required by Mami to grow up and mature much faster
than her younger siblings, male or female. Because of this, Negi is acutely aware of how she
mentally and emotionally develops. Her family members, however, seem to care little for Negi's
emotional development and instead fixate on Negi's developing body and physical passage from
child to woman. Though Negi is certainly interested in and perplexed by her changing body, she
sees Mami's consistent refrains to sit with her legs closed as reductive and not useful in light of
the very intense emotional coming of age that Negi undergoes.

* Bildungsroman is a special kind of novel that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of
its main character, from his or her youth to adulthood. A bildungsroman is a story of the growing
up of a sensitive person, who looks for answers to his questions through different experiences.

Theme: Family

When I Was Puerto Rican is a study of family dynamics, structure, and culture. Negi's family,
both nuclear and extended, is large, ever-changing, and at times fiercely loyal. However, family
isn't always perfectly defined or straightforward: particularly during times when Negi lives with
various extended family members, she struggle to understand what it really means to be family,
and seeks to define what family means for herself. In this way, Negi questions who's family, who
isn't, and who's technically family but doesn't act like a family member should.

Mami is one of 15 siblings, and it's never stated how many siblings Papi has. This creates a vast
web of aunts, cousins, and grandparents for Mami to call on when she needs help or is attempting
to escape Papi. Negi notes that she barely knows most of these aunts or female cousins, yet
they're always there to help Mami when she needs it. They treat Negi and her siblings as though
they've known each other forever, and Mami's mother in New York sends regular packages of
money and outgrown clothes from Mami's cousins. This gives Negi the security of a reliable
extended family; they're always willing to take in Mami and the children, or just the children, as
needed.
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/when-i-was-puerto-rican

Brock, Zoë. "When I Was Puerto Rican Plot Summary." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 3 Nov 2017. Web.
21 Apr 2021.