Common Reading 2002-2003
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
Discussion Guide for Faculty-led Student Groups at the Opening Sessions for Students

The following resources, questions and exercises are meant to be a guide for your faculty-led discussion section of When I Was Puerto Rican. Please feel free to adopt those suggestions that you find useful and to invent your own unique approaches to this text. We hope you have a wonderful and fruitful discussion with the students!

Setting the Room:

Before students arrive, you may want to create a particular setting for students to interact with. You might want to use photographs of Puerto Rico and of New York (these are included at the end of this packet) as a visual contrast for students to respond to. You can use these photographs to stimulate discussion of the text.

Some Internet resources include:

The Puerto Rican Government’s official site (in Spanish)
The CIA’s The World Factbook entry for Puerto Rico

Two helpful reference books in the LaGuardia library are:

Puerto Rico by Barbara Balletto (F1965.2.P83 1999)
Puerto Rico Past and Present: An Encyclopedia by Ronald Fernandez, Serafin Mendez Mendez and Gail Cueto (F 1954 .F47 1998).

You may also want to explore the library’s “Finding Aids” for Esmeralda Santiago. This appears on the Santiago website in the “Teaching” section.

About the Author:

When I Was Puerto Rican shares the biographical history of Esmeralda Santiago’s coming of age in Puerto Rico in the 1950’s and her family’s difficult move to New York City in 1961. Santiago received her B.A. from Harvard University and earned an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. In addition to When I Was Puerto Rican, Santiago has also written Almost a Woman, a memoir that completes the story begun in When I Was Puerto Rican and América’s Dream, a novel.

From the Author:

On the Random House website for When I Was Puerto Rican, Santiago shares:

When I began writing this book, I had no idea it would result in a dialogue about cultural identity. But as I've traveled around the country talking about it, people tell me that, while the culture I'm describing may not be the same as the one they grew up in, the feelings and experiences are familiar, and some of the events could have been taken from their own lives. It has been particularly poignant to speak to immigrants who have returned to their countries, only to discover how much they have changed by immersion in North American culture. They accept and understand the irony of the past tense in the title, the feeling that, while at one time they could not identify themselves as anything but the nationality to which they were born, once they've lived in the U.S. their "cultural purity" has been compromised, and they no longer fit as well in their native countries, nor do they feel one hundred percent comfortable as Americans.

When I returned to Puerto Rico after living in New York for seven years, I was told I was no longer Puerto Rican because my Spanish was rusty, my gaze too direct, my personality too assertive for a Puerto Rican woman, and I refused to eat some of the traditional foods like morcilla and tripe stew. I felt as Puerto Rican as when I left the island, but to those who had never left, I was contaminated by Americanisms, and therefore, had become less than Puerto Rican. Yet, in the United States, my darkness, my accented speech, my frequent lapses into the confused silence between English and Spanish identified me as foreign, non-American. In writing the book I wanted to get back to that feeling of Puertoricanness I had before I came here. Its title reflects who I was then, and asks, who am I today?

About the Book:

A Latina bildungsroman, Santiago’s story follows the emotional trajectory of her transition from life in Puerto Rico to life in the United States. This story follows Santiago through her audition to New York City’s High School of the Performing Arts. In the narrative Santiago raises questions about the monolith of such terms as “immigrant,” “woman,” “American” and “Nuyorican,” to name a few. She embodies these terms at the same time she problematizes them in her narrative.

Pre-Reading Exercises: (helpful for groups where many students haven’t read the book)

• Examine the back cover of the book. Ask students to talk about Santiago’s biography as it is revealed on the back cover.
• Ask students to respond to the images on the front cover.
• Study the “Table of Contents.” Guide students through a brief overview of the chapters by surveying the chapter titles.
• Demonstrate how the Spanish-English Glossary at the end of the book can be a useful resource.

Reading the Prologue Together: (helpful for groups where many students haven’t read the book)

• What is the importance of guava? What is the importance of Esmeralda Santiago as an expert of eating guava?
• Discuss how the guava is used as a metaphor of life experience—pre-immigrant life where guavas are free and plentiful versus post-immigrant life in New York where apples and pears are described as having a bittersweet taste and guavas are costly.
• Discuss why the author named the prologue “How To Eat a Guava.”

Association Questions:

• Ask students if they are familiar with the historical background of the “51st” state. Discuss the social and political connections between the two places.
• Talk about the title of one of the chapters—“American Invasion of Macun.” Discuss what kind of invasion it was.
• How does Esmeralda Santiago’s story relate to students’ life experiences? Do they see any similarities? Differences?
• How do immigrant students handle their identities growing up in or adjusting to a bilingual/bicultural society?
• How do native-born students relate to this immigrant experience?

Association Exercises:

• Show students a photograph Puerto Rico. Show them a photograph of New York. Ask them to comment on what they “see.”
• Ask students to free write for 5 minutes on the topic “When I Was…” Ask students to share their free writes.
• Linking the chapter “Letters from New York” to the discussion, ask students to free write for 5 minutes and write a mini-letter from New York to anyone living outside of New York. Ask students to share their free writes.
• Bring a guava or several guavas to class and share them with the students. Ask them to respond to the experience of eating a guava.

Additional Resources:

An Instructor’s Guide with fully annotated discussions and teaching suggestions for each chapter of When I Was Puerto Rican is available in Dean Arcario’s office.

Arthur Lau and J. Elizabeth Clark designed this year's When I Was Puerto Rican website for student and instructor information, resources and links.

For comments, suggestions or further inquiries, please contact Arthur C. Lau (x5629) or J. Elizabeth Clark (x5665).

**Discussion Guide for Student Openings Sessions created by J. Elizabeth Clark

J. Elizabeth Clark, Ph.D. (lclark@lagcc.cuny.edu)
Professor of English
Office: E-103 H in The Department of English
Phone:718.482.5665
Summer 2009 Office Hours

Site Credits: This site was last updated on 13 May 2009. Site designed and maintained by J. Elizabeth Clark. Technical Assistance provided by Delwar Sayeed and Priscilla Stadler.