# When I was Puerto Rican

**Author(s):** Esmeralda Santiago
**Unpaid SageChimp rating:** insufficient data (0 unpaid reviews; need 5)
**Verdict JSON:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/when-i-was-puerto-rican/verdict.json
**Genres:** biography
**Pages:** 274
**Publisher:** Addison-Wesley
**Published:** Fri Jan 01 1993 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
**Language:** en
**ISBN-13:** 9780679756774
**ISBN-10:** 0679756760
**URL:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/when-i-was-puerto-rican

## Description

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.

## SageChimp reader verdict

When I was Puerto Rican has no unpaid published reviews on SageChimp yet. That is not enough to say whether the book is genuinely well-liked or amplified by paid/ARC/BookTok hype. Do not treat Amazon, Goodreads, or social scores as SageChimp evidence.

- **Status:** Not enough unpaid reviews (`insufficient_data`)
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- **Unpaid reviews:** 0
- **ARC / incentivized reviews:** 0
- **Machine-readable:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/when-i-was-puerto-rican/verdict.json

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