The Book When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago was published in 1993. The book is based on Esmeralda's childhood life as an immigrant into different cities and states. She records the challenges she encountered trying to fit into different cities with different cultures from the one she had known. In the first few years of her life, she was resilient to change and was determined to maintain her identity as a Puerto Rican by not assimilating to the foreign culture and knowledge. Being from Puerto Rico, her first language was Spanish. However, when her family moved to New York, Esmeralda had changed her mind, and she was ready to learn the American culture, which included learning English. Luckily, New York library services facilitated by Library information service professionals helped her to learn and understand English within a short period. Library services are essential in enhancing different cultural inclusion. This paper will outline cultural diversity and relate library service roles in enhancing inclusion based on Esmeralda's experiences as a migrant in different cities.
Cultural Diversity, Inclusion and Library Information Services
The book depicts that different regions entail different cultures ranging from food, language, and moral values. Esmeralda was from Puerto Rican, and Spanish was her first language. She was connected to her language, and based on her understanding, Spanish acted as the identity of the Puerto Ricans people. The book illustrates that Esmeralda had vowed never to learn English as she perceived it as a betrayal to her identity. However, when she attends one of the schools in Santurce where the teacher uses only Spanish in teaching, Esmeralda finds out that a complete rejection of American culture was not honorable. This part of the book illustrates that the inclusion of diverse cultures is possible and important. This information is useful to the Library Information Services professionals, and they should ensure that there is an inclusion of cultural materials from different communities in the library. The books and cultural materials from different cultures should be well-organized so that people can find the material they are looking for easily. For instance, cultural materials from a particular culture should be displayed at a specific point and labeled well.
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Additionally, when Esmeralda moved to New York, she tried to adapt to a few cultures portrayed by her schoolmates in Brooklyn. The book outlines that students were divided into various groups that included Moreno- the black girls, Italians, Americans, and the Puerto Rican students divided into two groups. Esmeralda acknowledged that she admired the Moreno and Italian girls’ dress code (Santiago, 1993), thus illustrating that she was slowly being assimilated into the American culture. Unfortunately, neither of the groups accepted her. Other students teased and termed her a Jivaro , which was an insult. Her New York experiences outlined how hard it was to survive in a new city as an immigrant. However, Esmeralda was determined and knew that her success depended on the effort she projected toward her education.
Furthermore, when she attended Brooklyn school in New York, her teacher advised her to join seventh grade. However, she resisted the teacher’s suggestion and demanded to join eighth grade. She was granted her desire with a condition to learn English within six months. Consequently, she devoted most of her time to the library. The library services contributed significantly to Esmeralda's success in academic. It availed the necessary materials that she needed to learn English. As deduced from the book, librarian service professionals help immigrants comprehend necessary cultural information about the foreign country, including understanding language. Librarian services professionals possess a great responsibility to ensure that they develop and support library collections that involve different cultures and languages to enhance inclusivity of every ethnicity
Personal Reflection of the Book
The book has inspired me, and one main lesson I have learned is that library services are an integral part of enhancing inclusion and helping people learn about different cultures. It would have been challenging for Esmeralda to learn English without the help of library services. Additionally, some of my experiences relate to certain concepts in the book. Being a firstborn in a middle-class family where both parents needed to work and accumulate enough resources, I had to take care of my younger siblings most of the time. Exercising parenting responsibilities at a tender age affected my social life, and in most years of my junior school, I did not have any friends. I was subjected to bullying, and other students termed me as a “weirdo” because of my antisocial nature. However, just like Esmeralda, I was determined to work hard and ensure that my children would never be forced to act as parents to their siblings due to financial constraints.
This book can be used to give hope to the hopeless, notably immigrants who might be facing similar or worse challenges compared to the writer. I would recommend this book to any person who needs encouragement and desires to understand how cultural diversities affect immigrants. Furthermore, this book can be relevant to Library Information professionals because it will help them understand that immigrants might need their services. Therefore, they should learn how to manage and deliver appropriate information to users from different cultures. They should also ensure that there is an inclusion of several different cultural materials to support diverse communities. I have developed an interest in studying Library information services to gain a profound understanding of how the inclusivity of different cultures can be projected through library services, especially in the current days, where globalization is rampant, leading to the increased interaction of different communities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the book, When I Was Puerto Rican exhibits aspects of diversity and the cultural difference associated with different cities and countries. Esmeralda encountered diverse cultural cities because her parents migrated to several places during her childhood life. In the first few years, Esmeralda seemed connected to her culture and did not want to conform to the foreign culture. However, because change is inevitable, she tried to assimilate to the new culture. The library services facilitated by library information professionals helped her in the assimilation process. Undoubtedly, the library information services contribute significantly to ensuring the inclusion of different cultural materials in the library, thus embracing diversity.
References
Santiago, E. (1993). When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir . Hachette UK.
