The Discovery of Female Adolescent Sexuality in the Cultural Context of Puerto Rico (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, LMU Munich (Amerika-Institut), course: Ethnicity and American Identity in Contemporary Fiction, language: English, abstract: Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican was her first autobiographic novel and it was the precursor of two following memoirs: Almost a Woman and The Turkish Lover. In When I Was Puerto Rican Santiago tells of her early childhood during the 1950s and '60s. The story told in the novel starts in Puerto Rico at Santiago's age of four up to the age of thirteen when she immigrates with her mother and her then six siblings to the US to live in Brooklyn, New York. Her memoir does not only show the difficulty of switching between two different cultures and mentalities, American and Puerto Rican, but it also portrays the coming of age process of a girl who has to find a balance between her individual desires and expectations of her surrounding world. The novel reveals the Santiago family's dealings with the pitfalls of poverty and their dreams of a better life. This family experiences life in all varieties: they are moving from the rural town of Macún to the urban area of Santurce, a district of Puerto Rico's capital San Juan. The family's destiny as a whole unity is yet only a framing plot.
The novel illustrates the struggle of understanding the world from a child's perspective. In the case of young Esmeralda it is especially hard to understand the dynamics of her unmarried parents' relationship. For her it is a challenging rethinking process to learn how to tell from her parents' behavior, who is right and who is wrong. She also longs for appreciation called forth by sibling rivalry and the maternal responsibility for her younger sisters and brothers make Esmeralda question woman- and manhood, which eventually leads her to an inner rebellion. In When I Was Puerto Rican Santiago shares the beginning of her search for the intricate question of her own sexuality. She unveils her solitary way to find femininity, how she had to find the answers to her questions all by herself, due to the omnipresent secretiveness about sexuality. Santiago explains how her younger self tried to unfold the mystery of her mother's constant but unexplained warning of being casi señorita - almost a young lady. This memoir illustrates the transformation from an inexperienced girl to a teenager, who tries to define herself and figure out what she wants and expects from life.