The book When I Was Puerto Rican recounts the early years of the author, Esmeralda Santiago. One of her three chronicles of her childhood in Puerto Rico is her final residence in America. The story is that of a coming of age. Still, it draws richer content than that, and frequent questions of identity–female identity, national identity, familial identity, heredity identity, sematic labels, and spiritual identity–underpin Santiago's illustrated stories.
The book commences in Puerto Rico, whereby Esmeralda is six years of age. At first, she introduces the reader to her parents and the high growing number of her siblings–by the end, she is among the eleven children. She refers to her parents as Mami and Papi, who also have a rocky relationship ( Santiago, 1994 ). There are hints of her Papi had been unfaithful in the book and did not spend most of his time with his children as they would have wanted. The next thing is that the book indicates Esmeralda's increased awareness of her parent's problems in the relationship plus and implications towards anyone who chooses to get married.
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Nonetheless, Mami's condition prompts her to ask herself massive questions about what women and herself owe themselves. As the book advances, Esmeralda struggles with typical childhood problems: romance, mortality, puberty, and bullying. From the book's setting, Esmeralda lives in poverty conditions. These issues have their own set of complicated questions.
In the second section of the context, Esmeralda shifts to New York City; her immigration experience will never appear relevant to readers attentive to current immigration processes and discussions in The United States. Moreover, her progress in discussing sexual awareness and the being "other" sense is familiar to most leaders. The moment she gets to New York, she has problems in finding a group to fit into and is also surprised to discover that American-born children, but born of parents who were Puerto Rica, never mixes native children from Puerto Rica like Esmeralda.
Before she shifted to New York, Esmeralda had no thoughts of going to another place or living with another family. At the end of the book, she graduates from high school and at the moment forced to confront two questions from the book: "what do I want to do with my life?" and also "Have I learned enough to do it?" Therefore, in this context, education is a significant theme, primarily the impacts of acquiring little children or an inadequate number of teachers.
Similarly, the book is also a massive examination of differences between women and men, as per the children's perspectives. At the start of the context, Esmeralda possesses only the gossip on women around her informing her opinions on men. Men are displayed to be irredeemably overtaken by novelty and rust, to abandon their children and wives the moment someone else attractive turns their head–of which this is not fair. Predictably, by the moment Esmeralda graduates from high school, she possesses her own stories concerning unsuitable men plus their sexual aggressiveness.
Another factor well displayed in the book is a duty. In which, the moment Papi leaves the family, Mami takes care of all of them. She has to acquire a job, and the burden all falls on Esmeralda, of which she is both tangentially proud and resentful of the work given to her, but she is up to the challenge ( Santiago, 1994 ). There is duty examination to a person's family, the wife, the person's nation, the person's friend, and much more. Therefore, according to Esmeralda, individuals owe each other more than they give.
Lastly, guilt is evident in When I Was Puerto Rican book. The context is more of a girl who finally realizes that she not to blame for problems in her life. In her early times, she is bitten by termites, which makes her believe that she disobeyed her Mami, which shows guilt. The theme is also evident as Esmeralda blames herself for events that occurred, and thus the egocentrism never provides her with a sense of her excellent qualities.
The book falls short by displaying men negatively in society. In my view, men are the head of the family, but responsibilities can get shared between partners. Although a father figure is negatively portrayed in the context, society should respect men for their position in society. From the context, Esmeralda’s previous sexual experiences make her understandably afraid of engaging a man in romance since she is protective of her body and herself, plus she has learned that men are aggressors. Negatively portraying men in the whole book is an issue I find bothering, and the author should have improved.
Library information services concentrate on operations and procedures of developing, maintaining, and providing support to the library collection and other services behind its operation like classification, acquisition, and classification. The relationship between the book and library information services is that there is a lot of struggle while looking for peace and retain one’s cultural heritage. Esmeralda ends up living in the United States while still trying to retain her Puerto Rican culture. Library data can get improved by applying contextual insight, which possesses strategic value in renewal and acquisition decisions. By using data analytics, individuals can determine cultural diversities and traits in their society and other nations.
Reference
Santiago, E. (1994). When I was Puerto Rican . Da Capo Press
