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Esmeralda Santiago came to the United States from Puerto Rico at age thirteen, and attended junior high school in Brooklyn and Performing Arts High School in New York City. After the extraordinary years described in this book, she graduated from Harvard University and received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Santiago is the author of When I Was Puerto Rican and Americas Dream, and is coeditor, with Joie Davidow, of Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories. Santiago lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and two children. In her new memoir, the acclaimed author of When I Was Puerto Rican continues the riveting chronicle of her emergence from the barrios of Brooklyn to the theaters of Manhattan. Negi, as Santiagos family affectionately calls her, leaves rural Macun in 1961 to live in a three-room tenement apartment with seven young siblings, an inquisitive grandmother, and a strict mother who wont allow her to date. At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New Yorks prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of challenges. At once a universally poignant coming-of-age tale and a brave and heartfelt immigrants story, Almost a Woman is Santiagos triumphant journey into womanhood. Martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques, ni de tu familia te apartes. In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times. We stuffed our belongings into ragged suitcases, boxes with bold advertising on the sides, pillowcases, empty rice sacks, cracker tins that smelled of flour and yeast. Whatever we couldnt carry, we left behind: dressers with missing drawers, refrigerators, lumpy sofas, the fifteen canvases I painted one summer. We learned not to attach value to possessions because they were as temporary as the walls that held us for a few months, as the neighbors who lived down the street, as the sad-eyed boy who loved me when I was thirteen. We moved from country to city to country to small town to big city to the biggest city of all. Once in New York, we moved from apartment to apartment, in search of heat, of fewer cockroaches, of more rooms, of quieter neighbors, of more privacy, of nearness to the subway or the relatives. We moved in loops around the neighborhoods we wanted to avoid, where there were no Puerto Ricans, where graffiti warned of gang turfs, where people dressed better than we did, where landlords didnt accept welfare, or didnt like Puerto Ricans, or looked at our family of three adults, eleven children and shook their heads. We avoided the neighborhoods with too few stores, or too many stores, or the wrong kind of store, or no stores at all. We circled around our first apartment the way animals circle the place where they will sleep, and after ten years of circling, Mami returned to where we began the journey, to Mac?n, the Puerto Rican barrio where everyone knew each other and each others business, where what we left behind was put to good use by people who moved around less. By the time she returned to Mac?n, Id also moved. Four days after my twenty-first birthday, I left Mamis house, the rhyme I sang as a child forgotten: Martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques, ni de tu familia te apartes. On a misty Tuesday, I didnt marry, but I did travel, and I did leave my family. I stuffed in the mailbox a letter addressed to Mami in which I said goodbye, because I didnt have the courage to say goodbye in person. I went to Florida, to begin my own journey from one city to another. Each time I packed my belongings, I left a little of myself in the rooms that sheltered me, never home, always just the places I lived. I congratulated myself on how easy it was to leave them, how well I packed everything I owned into a couple of boxes and a suitcase. Years later, when I visited Mac?n, I went to the spot where my childhood began and ended. I stepped on what was left of our blue tiled floor and looked at the wild greenness around me, at what had been a yard for games, at the corner where an eggplant bush became a Christmas tree, at the spot where I cut my foot and blood seeped into the dust. It was no longer familiar, nor beautiful, nor did it give a clue of who Id been there, or who I might become wherever I was going next. The moriviv? weeds and the culantro choked the dirt yard, creepers had overgrown the cement floor, pinakoop climbed over what was left of the walls and turned them into soft green mounds that sheltered drab olive lizards and chameleons, coqu? and hummingbirds. There was no sign wed ever been there, except for the hillock of blue cement tile on which I stood. It gleamed in the afternoon sun, its color so intense that I wondered if I had stepped onto the wrong floor because I didnt remember our floor being that blue. Something could happen to you. We came to Brooklyn in 1961, in search of medical care for my youngest brother, Raymond, whose toes were nearly severed by a bicycle chain when he was four. In Puerto Rico, doctors wanted to amputate the often red and swollen foot, because it wouldnt heal. In New York, Mami hoped, doctors could save it. The day we arrived, a hot Not only for readers who share [Santiagos] experiences but for North Americans who seek to understand what it means to be the other.--The Boston Globe In her new memoir, the acclaimed author of When I Was Puerto Rican continues the riveting chronicle of her emergence from the barrios of Brooklyn to the theaters of Manhattan. Negi, as Santiagos family affectionately calls her, leaves rural MacAnd#250;n in 1961 to live in a three-room tenement apartment with seven young siblings, an inquisitive grandmother, and a strict mother who wont allow her to date. At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New Yorks prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of challenges. At once a universally poignant coming-of-age tale and a brave and heartfelt immigrants story, Almost a Woman is Santiagos triumphant journey into womanhood.And#160;And#160; A universal tale familiar to thousands of immigrants to this country, but made special by Santiagos simplicity and honesty. --The Miami Herald A courageous memoir. . . . One witnesses. . .the blessings, contradictions and restraints of Puerto Rican culture. --The Washington Post Book World Negi, as the authors family affectionately calls her, leaves rural Macun in 1961 to live in a three-bedroom tenement apartment with seven siblings, an inquisitive grandmother, And a strict mother who wont allow her to date. At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, And her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New Yorks Performing Arts High School in the afternoon, And dancing salsa all night, she also seeks to find balance between being American And Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of dates, she finds the independence brings challenges. At one a universally poignant coming-of-age tale And a heartfelt immigrants story, this book is the authors journey into womanhood. Not only for readers who share [Santiagos] experiences but for North Americans who seek to understand what it means to be the other.--The Boston Globe In her new memoir, the acclaimed author of When I Was Puerto Rican continues the riveting chronicle of her emergence from the barrios of Brooklyn to the theaters of Manhattan. Negi, as Santiagos family affectionately calls her, leaves rural MacAnd#250;n in 1961 to live in a three-room tenement apartment with seven young siblings, an inquisitive grandmother, and a strict mother who wont allow her to date. At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New Yorks prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of challenges. At once a universally poignant coming-of-age tale and a brave and heartfelt immigrants story, Almost a Woman is Santiagos triumphant journey into womanhood.And#160;And#160; A universal tale familiar to thousands of immigrants to this country, but made special by Santiagos simplicity and honesty. --The Miami Herald A courageous memoir. . . . One witnesses. . .the blessings, contradictions and restraints of Puerto Rican culture. --The Washington Post Book World