When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmerelda Santiago is an autobiographical piece, and as such my usual approach of dissecting and analyzing the creative decisions made in it cannot be applied to it as smoothly as they can be applied to a fictional story, since her story actually happened and is not a fabrication of her imagination. However, I can still discuss the impact this reading had on me personally. Reading this, I realized that shared personal experiences can go a long way to helping a reader relate to a character’s or person’s experiences that the reader themselves have not faced. For me, racism and the cultural friction like what Santiago went through in her childhood never had a noticeable impact on me, and I have trouble relating to stories about the racism people suffer when I myself have little experience with it, even if my sense of sympathy lets me feel for them. With Santiago, a specific aspect of her life that I can relate to enabled me to relate better to her other experiences that I have not faced. Specifically, when she learned that her father had an affair and a child with another woman. I had learned of something similar myself a few years ago. Santiago’s innocent desire to meet her newfound half-sister also mirrors my own wish to meet the half-siblings I never knew about before. Similarly, it helps me relate a little better with her experiences of being affected by strictly traditional gender roles and sexist double standards, the disadvantages of which I have had the privilege of largely avoiding since I am male. Race has held very little salience to my personal identity, so having a shared experience with Santiago lets me connect to her racial struggles in a way I otherwise could not.
(Unfortunately, I do not have access to the rest of the book beyond the first half, as the copy I was reading in the library has been checked out by someone else.)
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