When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago - the Life of an Immigrant - Essay Example

When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago - the Life of an Immigrant One of the important characteristics of our modern world is the increasing rate of intermingling between cultures, which on one hand leads to the positive growth of our awareness of the variety and diversity of cultural traditions and existing world views, but on the other hand quite often creates tensions between people. Such tensions may be especially challenging for those who live in a society with its own dominant culture, while themselves representing a different cultural tradition. This situation is particularly common for our society in which there are a lot of representatives of different ethnic groups, and into which their members with the different degree of success are trying to become harmonically integrated. However, for people that had spent some part of their lives in different cultural and social environments, and, moreover, who had been formed as personalities outside our society, the task of integration can hardly be an easy one. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges for such people may after all lie in finding a proper balance between their status as immigrants, who would inevitably to a certain degree be faced with their perception by other people and even by themselves as in essence alien, and their new status as members of a new society, which with time carries them further and further away from their native culture, thus alienating them from it as well. Thus, this two-sided dilemma is perhaps one of the greatest challenges that immigrants have to find their own answer to, and on this answer to a great measure depends their future life and success. Luckily, there are ways to come out of this dilemma as a winner, and examples of such personal victories of people are worthy of our great respect. In this regard, we may turn our attention to the life story of Esmeralda Santiago, an immigrant from Puerto Rico who had passed through numerous difficulties to reach a prominent status as a writer and owner of a film company. I suppose that with the help of her autobiographical book "When I was Puerto Rican" we may immediately experience the challenges that we have discussed by taking a look at the life of an immigrant from her own point of view. Esmeralda Santiago was the eldest child in the family and had ten brothers and sisters. She grew in Puerto Rico, and during her childhood due to family circumstances was changing her place of living between a village and a suburb of the capital of Puerto Rico. In 1961, when she was thirteen, Esmeralda Santiago with her mother and her siblings moved to New York. There, after having hard times attending school in Brooklyn, she managed to enter the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, then graduated from Harvard University, and received from Sarah Lawrence College a master's degree. Now, with her husband and two children Santiago lives in Westchester County, New York (Santiago 2006). Santiago summarized her outstanding years of life in several books, of which "When I Was Puerto Rican" is perhaps one of the closest to her concerns about the immigrants` dilemma of identity definition. Indeed, the past tense of the book`s title is immediately indicative of her mixed attitude to her past, and from the very opening pages of this autobiography we as readers begin to understand why that is the case. The reason for this is the extremely vivid style of Santiago`s writing, which perfectly fits the period of childhood of every person as during that time life is perceived in a very special and bright way. That is why we can see already from the beginning of the book that the part of the story where the author describes her early years of life will never lose its influence on Santiago in her later life. What adds to it is the sheer exotics of the environment of Macun community the little Negi, as she Santiago used to be called, was growing in, like the house of her family that resembled "a giant version of the lard cans used to haul water from the public fountain" (Santiago 1994, p.7), or pernicious insects from which their house could hardly offer a decent protection as a few examples. Add to this the strain between Negi`s parents - her hardworking mother and her errant father, who, despite loving his children, nevertheless had affairs with other women, which in the end instigated Negi`s parents to separate. But before that happens, the often distressing relationships between her mother and father are depicted by Santiago with pain but without judgement, in a way as a child would indeed perceive relations between parents. All these circumstances of Santiago`s childhood, forced into our imagination with the help of the author`s descriptive literary talent, introduces us to the conditions of her life - poverty, conflicts between her parents, and the position of Santiago as the eldest child to help her mother with the rest of children, which, in combination with the expectations that parents laid upon Negi, was inflicting her nascent self-image. Again, due to the impressive level of immersion into the account enabled by the author masterful language, we almost emotionally relive events that greatly impress Negi along with her, as for example is the case with the bicycle accident in which the youngest brother of Negi hurts his foot. In addition to this, the Spanish culture of Puerto Rican society was also exerting a great influence on Santiago. For example, this concerns different roles of men and women in Puerto Rico, where it was normal that if men work hard they may have time for rest, while women are rarely given such a time for recreation even after a much harder toil. As the result of this, women often develop a disrespect and hostility towards men, which surely influenced the world view of Negi. On the other hand, striving to understand the notion of love Negi gets engulfed in romantic novels that offer a contrasting image of love relationships. The concept of dignidad, which along with some other Spanish terms Santiago finds difficult if not impossible to properly translate into English, represents another dominant element of the social code of Puerto Rican society that, ironically, often only contributes to the oppression of women. On ground of these tensions, we also trace the development of sexuality of young Santiago, and with a great emotion witness the description of her first sexual encounter. With all these factors and influences having shaped the adolescent world view of Santiago, as a girl she arrives to New York where her grandmother lives, and initially settles in Brooklyn from the misery of which she soon becomes determined to get out. From now on Negi, who is a very good student but has problems with English, must count only on her talents and intelligence in order to survive in a new and in many ways different society that does not treat her Puerto Rican origin in a very positive way. At this point, the quest to find a solution for the dilemma of a new identity formation and simultaneous preservation of one`s roots begins in earnest for Santiago. And here Negi manifests a great deal of resolve, as she learns English very quickly, overcomes numerous obstacles on her way to leave Brooklyn, her sensation of living in a Hispanic cultural ghetto, and her life in poverty, and is finally accepted to the prestigious High School of Performing Arts, which symbolizes her achievements and her victory over those who might have doubts about her capacities. In this way, after essentially participating in the story of her life as readers we in the epilogue of the book along with Santiago begin to perceive her studies at Harvard as an inspiring statement of the capability of the human spirit to go beyond social and cultural limitations that may be imposed by a society. With all this said, I am sure that after reading the book of Esmeralda Santiago "When I was Puerto Rican" every attentive and sensitive reader will come much closer to the understanding of challenges that arise before immigrants in our society and of the difficulty that they have in addressing the split of identities. But this book is not really meant to discourage us, but instead it shows that there are ways out of this dilemma that do not deprive people of what is important to them but rather combine the best things of the different parts of their lives into one unifying world view. In the case of Esmeralda Santiago, her answer to this dilemma has been in her success after her arrival to the United States, and her ability to retain and vividly retell in her memoirs a story of the previous part of her life, which would undoubtfully encourage many people who are in a similar situation, and would be equally inspiring for all others as well. Sources Parke, Catherine N. Biography: Writing Lives. Twayne Publishers, 1996. Santiago, Esmeralda. "A note to the reader". Vintage, 2006. 24 February, 2006 http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/puerto/santiago.html Santiago, Esmeralda. America's Dream. Rayo, 1997. Santiago, Esmeralda. Almost a Woman. Vintage, 1999. Santiago, Esmeralda. When I was Puerto Rican. Vintage, 1994. Read More