Esmeralda Santiago

In 2008, Santiago noticed her manuscript, which she wrote the day before, was unintelligible and appeared like a foreign language.[5] Her symptoms led her to believe she possibly suffered from a stroke, and after a doctor's visit and tests, her suspicions became confirmed. The stroke affected the Wernicke's area of the brain and made her unable to read and write in both Spanish, her native language, and English.[6] Santiago relearned how to read and write English, as she did when she learned at age 13. Children's books with illustrations helped Santiago connect words to the images, teaching her brain to read again.[7]

Today, her reading and writing ability remains partially unrecovered.[6] When she suffered her stroke, her novel, Conquistadora, was unfinished and her main goal in relearning written English was to finish it. She improved enough to complete her novel, but remained unable to do the Spanish translation of her piece herself.[7] Santiago continues to write today and can produce about 300 words per day post-stroke, whereas she completed 1000 words a day prior. Her stroke, its effects and her ability to relearn language are chronicled in neurology magazines and other medical pieces, making her a case study for strokes and stroke recovery.[6]

When I was Puerto Rican was published in 1993 and takes an autobiographical approach to Santiago's childhood. It details her life from early childhood and stops at her departure from Puerto Rico at age 13. She narrates growing up under imperialistic American ideologies that often conflict with her Puerto Rican culture. Aspects like familial relationships, food and coming-of-age are highlighted throughout the piece.[1]

After receiving her degree from Harvard, Santiago returned to Puerto Rico to work. She experienced cultural dissonance as many Puerto Ricans considered her overly Americanized while Americans racially ostracized her for being Puerto Rican.[3] Additionally, it became difficult for her to find employment, like other highly educated women in Puerto Rico. Santiago chose to return to the United States and began publishing short essays and stories in local press. She wrote When I was Puerto Rican after gaining attention and encouragement from an editor in the United States. Santiago's writing illustrates the important perspective of someone who experiences both Puerto Rican and American culture from an outside lens.[1]

Santiago states that she chooses to "write for women. I don't care if men read my work... It's women's lives I'm interested in."[8] Her intention in writing is to bring light to the patriarchal tendencies of Puerto Rican culture, both in the United States and on the island of Puerto Rico.[1] In When I was Puerto Rican, Santiago illustrates sexist experiences from her own life, extending recognition to other women who experienced similar treatment.[3]

In Almost a Woman, published in 1998,[9] Santiago extends upon her memoir When I was Puerto Rican and continues from her late childhood through adolescence in the United States.[4] The main character, Negi, experiences identity crises at the hands of adolescence while simultaneously navigating acculturation after her move from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, New York. Negi becomes faced with deciding how she would like society and her family to perceive her, forcing her to define how Puerto Rican and American she would like to be. Acquisition of English is Negi's first stride towards bridging the gap between her Puerto Rican upbringing and her American school, as once she can speak English, her cultural identity becomes more fluid.[10]

Santiago demonstrates the plight of Puerto Rican women living in the United States as they battle cultural identities.[4][10] Her piece includes a scene in which Negi performs a play and celebrates with her American caste-mates at the end.[9] She sees her parents far away and notices their cultural differences, and she also recognizes the dissonance between her caste-mates and herself. Like many other daughters of immigrants, Negi plays the role of the in-between: not Puerto Rican to her family, yet not American to her classmates.[10] The in-between space marks her acculturation as she embodies both, yet neither, of the cultures.[4] While Negi's cultural position is common to immigrants, there is a paucity of literature regarding that subject, and Santiago creates a new path for daughters of Puerto Rican immigrants by recognizing and popularizing the difficulty of acculturation.[10][11]

The Turkish Lover, published in 2004,[12] illustrates Santiago's love affair with a Turkish film-maker, Ulvi, and documents its abusive aspects.[13] The memoir picks up where Almost a Woman leaves off, and Negi escapes from her mother's home to run away with Ulvi.[14][13] Through Ulvi's control, Negi, now nicknamed "Chiquita" by Ulvi, slowly loses aspects of her Puerto Rican identity, and by the end of their eight-year relationship, Chiquita no longer recognizes modern Puerto Rican pop culture.[13] She matriculates into Harvard and begins to argue and defend political topics surrounding popular issues- including Puerto Rico.[14] Chiquita then travels back to Puerto Rico and is struck by the mass destruction of natural beauty and the food-chains and big-box stores that replace it.[13] The separation she feels from Puerto Rico is solidified and the narration shifts from third-person to first, as Santiago claims the main character for the first time in any of her memoirs and describes the sensation of coming into one's self and feeling solidified in one's identity.[13][14] In claiming herself, she also breaks free from Ulvi, and graduates Magna Cum Laude from Harvard[2] with no one in the audience.[14]

Unique to The Turkish Lover is Santiago's claim to the main character, alongside the different names the main character goes through throughout the piece.[14] Her final memoir serves as a reclamation of her identity documenting the turbulence throughout her journey of acculturation and her abusive relationship.[13] In the end, the protagonist 'Santiago' is the same one that is writing, demonstrating personal growth and the achievement of defining oneself.[13][14]

Conquistadora, written in 2011, is Santiago's latest piece.[6] It follows Ana's characterization as she battles oppressive societal expectations of gender, class and race in 19th century Puerto Rico.[15] Ana arrives in Puerto Rico at the age of 18 in search of power and money but instead faces the harsh realities of slavery on her sugar plantation. She becomes forced to navigate a society in which morality and immorality exist cohesively.[16]

In writing Conquistadora, Santiago researched and explored Puerto Rican history extensively. Puerto Rican records and literature did not include narratives of women, the economically disadvantaged or enslaved peoples. Coming from a poor, rural family, Santiago did not have records of her family's history, and Conquistadora is an imagined example of what her history could have been.[15] Like other Latinx writers of this time, Santiago's writing serves as both a tool to discover and uncover her cultural identity, seen heavily in her exploration of her family's history.[8] Santiago also touches on the devastating impact of slavery on the people of Puerto Rico; something often glanced over by popular literature as some considered slavery in Puerto Rico to be less severe than in other nations.[15]

• "A Doll for Navidades," a children's book written by Santiago outlines her childhood Christmas traditions and includes her writing to the Three Magi to receive a doll for Christmas.[17] Unlike many of her other pieces, the book is catered towards children but like her other pieces, it brings greater societal awareness to Puerto Rican culture and experiences.[18][2]
• America's Dream, published in 1997, depicts a Puerto Rican woman's first encounters with the United States in suburban New York while also navigating a strained relationship with her daughter.[19]
• Las Christmas, a collection of stories about the holidays by twenty-five Latinx authors, was edited by Santiago.[20]
• Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember Their Mothers is a collection of stories about author's mothers and was edited by Santiago.[21]
• The screenplays Beverly Hills Supper Club and Button, Button.[22]
• Santiago is a contributor to the anthologies Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own and Perspectivas Sobre Puerto Rico en Homenaje a Muñoz Rivera y Muñoz Marín, Fundacíón Luis Muñoz Marín.[22]
• Las Madres, is a powerful and heartbreakingly accurate portrait of those unimaginable hours and seemingly interminable days after the storm, and its plots and characters’ stories center around one important theme: the battle against forgetting.[23]