When I Was Puerto Rican
by Esmeralda Santiago
A girl leaves Puerto Rico and arrives somewhere that doesn't see her.
For you if
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.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$20 MSRP
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
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe(2023)
dir. Aitch Alberto
One summer, secrets neither boy knew he had.
In 1987 El Paso, two Mexican-American teenage loners strike up a friendship that cracks open everything one of them has spent years keeping carefully closed off — including who he is. Adapted from Benjamin Alire Sáenz's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in its tenderness rather than its edge — a bilingual, bicultural, queer coming-of-age story that doesn't need trauma to justify its own gentleness. Pedagogical in showing how friendship can crack open a kid who's spent years protecting himself by staying closed.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(2002)
dir. Dai Sijie
Banned books, secret readings, and one crush.
Two city students sent to a remote mountain village for Maoist "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution discover a hidden suitcase of banned Western novels — and use them to woo the local tailor's granddaughter. Adapted from Dai Sijie's own novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in treating banned Western novels as genuinely dangerous contraband — literature here isn't decoration, it's the thing state re-education is specifically designed to purge. Pedagogical in showing how forbidden art still gets in, and still changes people, even under total surveillance.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
A Court of Thorns and Roses
Sarah J. Maas
Survival instincts don't stop at the Wall.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Blankets
Craig Thompson
The memoir that proved comics could break your heart.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Breathless
Jennifer Niven
A teen girl writes her own story.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Different Seasons
Stephen King
How fascism finds the boy next door.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
Flamer
Mike Curato
A gay Latino teen at camp. Banned for existing.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Drama
Raina Telgemeier
A graphic novel about theater, crushes, and who you are
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré
Anika Aldamuy Denise
She brought her stories. The library changed.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Antiracist Baby
Ibram X. Kendi
Woke from day one.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST