When I Was Puerto Rican is an autobiography about the author, Esmeralda Santiago, and her experience growing up in Puerto Rico and the cultural, emotional, and environmental changes she went through moving to New York.
Reviews by Students
40 posts
“The smallest person on the totem pole was supposed to be a worker and the one on the top was the one with the brains,” says Ashanti Alston in Black Anarchism
This book gave a better understanding of the difficulties of loss, how mental illness impacts people, as well as the understanding and support of those who are affected by these events.
This book reveals how truly precious life is and how every moment of it is special.
Everything about this story is charming and the drawings used as examples of the artist’s work are a joy to look at.
Franz Kafka wrote, “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
Julia was always seen as the “black sheep” of her family, looked down upon for not being like her older sister Olga. So when she is expected to fill the very small and perfect shoes Olga left behind after passing away, she struggles to keep up.
“I am happy and mixed up, full and empty, with what’s right and what’s gone.” As a book teaching good morals to children, this line can be relatable to adult readers too.
In her memoir, F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me, Chloé Hilliard shares her life experiences growing up as a “Fat” Black woman in 1990s–2000s Brooklyn and embraces her natural body.
Fear these streets no longer. We belong in them just as everyone else does.
What would you do if you were approached by the devil with a deal that gets you more time to live?
This story shows the stages of dealing with something—from shock to acceptance, or shock to denial.
