When I Was Puerto Rican
by Esmeralda Santiago
A girl leaves Puerto Rico and arrives somewhere that doesn't see her.
you've ever had to translate yourself for a world that wasn't built with you in mind
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Supports independent bookstores
Secondhand & sustainable
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Santiago grew up in rural Puerto Rico and moved to New York as a teenager — crossing not just geography but language, class, and identity simultaneously. This memoir is the dispatch from inside that crossing — the specific sensation of being fluent in a culture that the new world has no category for, of carrying a self that doesn't translate. Her prose is so precise about the textures of Puerto Rican rural life that you grieve its loss alongside her. The most widely read Puerto Rican memoir in English and the one that opened the door for everything that followed.
WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES
- Setting
- Puerto Rico • Caribbean
- Voice
- Written by a Puerto Rican author
- Themes
- War & DisplacementBorderlands
