When I Was Puerto Rican Analysis

Life is fair. But someone might be born as a prince while other be born as a homeless child. Anyhow, life is fair. In the biography “When I Was Puerto Rican” written by Esmeralda Santiago, Esmeralda uses her hard work to change her life and reach her dream shows that even she was born poor. In Puerto Rican, everyone has a nickname for family and friends. Esmeralda’s nickname is Negi. Negi was born in a Puerto Rican family with more than ten kids. Because she is the eldest, she needs to take care of all her brothers and sisters. She needs to live her life in the complaints from her siblings about how strict is she and that she is not her mother Ramona. Also, needs to live to her life be treated as an irresponsible high-paid professional babysitter whenever she makes a single

little mistake. In her childhood, she lives in a mixture of love and hate, blending and excluding each other. The parents who love and hate each other and her feeling of both love and hate toward her parent and the family. Her family has more to pour fire on the oil, her family was poor and her father is a poor paid blue coat. It leads her mother to work in a factory and break a record since her mother is the only mother who works in the whole city. Esmeralda needs to help out her family, even though she is just a normal student. After every small fight with her father, her mom takes the kids move back and forth from one city to another. But eventually, no paper can wrap fire, her parents fight for the last time. So all the kids and her mother move to New York with a full heart of hope for a brand new life. Both her mother and Negi herself don’t understand much English, she only studied English as a second language in Puerto Rico, just like other non-English-speaking countries. She went to her school to register, the principle says she must stay in seventh grade.

Negi doesn’t accept the fact she must stay back a grade, she already got a good grade when she was a seventh-grader. Even though she truly knows her English is poor, but she uses her scramble English argues with the principle bravely only with the paper in Spanish representing the good grade she always has. Eventually, the principal makes an agreement that she can be in eighth grade, but only until Christmas, after that, it depends on what she succeed. Esmeralda Santiago is technically an eighth grader, but she gets send to the disabled class. Even she is in the disabled class, but she learns as much she can learn from all the teachers. She spends all her spare time on memorizing words and trying to read English books. By Christmas, Esmeralda is one of the best students in the school, even on English, history, and social studies. So the principal finally fully approves her. One day, her homeroom teacher Mr.Brown asks her what is her dream. She realizes that she doesn’t have a dream. She keeps thinking then realizes that she wants to become an actress. She signs up an audition for the performing art

school. She practices every day with Mr.Brown on answering audition questions, small manners, pronunciation. She also practices with drama teacher every day. She gets into Performing Art School. And years later, she finally reaches her dream, become an actress.