Versión español

Book cover Almost a Woman

The publication of her autobiographical memoir When I was Puerto Rican (1993) immediately gained Esmeralda Santiago critical attention as a talented and deliberate narrator of women's oppressive experiences in a sexist cultural environment. Santiago is now one of the leading Puerto Rican writers in the United States.

Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, the author grew up in a rural sector of the town of Toa Baja. Coming from a large poor family, she was eleven years old when her mother decided to move with her children to Brooklyn, New York. Because of her academic achievements, she was able to secure admission to New York's Performing Arts High School and study acting. After graduating from high school she attended Harvard University where she received a BA degree. She also holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a more recent honorary doctoral degree from Trinity College.

Her writing career, however, took a while to develop. Soon after graduating from Harvard she went back to Puerto Rico to work after many years of absence from the island. There, she was confronted with the severe underemployment situation faced by many other educated Puerto Ricans. But more hurtful was the rejection she felt from those who questioned her Puerto Ricanness or viewed her as too Americanized. These personal dilemmas compelled her eventual return to the United States. She moved to Boston, and it was during this period that she started writing personal essays and articles for newspapers and magazines that caught the attention of an editor from the Addison-Wesley company, which encouraged her to write When I was Puerto Rican.

Santiago's memoir is not a rejection of her Puerto Rican identity, as the title may suggest, but an engaging account of her life and that of her family during her growing up years in Puerto Rico before the family migrated to the United States. After the initial success of When I Was Puerto Rican, she confirmed that she was a skillful prose fiction writer in her second major work, the novel America's Dream (1996). Her third book, Almost a Woman (1998), a sequel to When I was Puerto Rican expands on her life in the United States and her artistic development. The author's latest novel, The Turkish Lover (El amante turco, 2005) is a candid autobiographical narrative of self-fulfillment and liberation, as she describes her complex and abusive relationship with an older and controlling Turkish man, and her ability to walk away, pursue her educational aspirations, and eventually find her way to become the successful and talented writer that she is today.

Santiago considers herself a women's writer, as she once told journalist Carmen Dolores Hernández in a 1997 interview: "I write for women. I don't care if men read my work; it doesn't matter to me. I'm very deliberate about that. [...] It's women's lives I'm interested in" (160). And just as the author tries to reach out to women in her narratives, her female characters are examples of how Puerto Rican women struggle and endure the oppressive conditions ingrained in their own culture and society, as well as those they confront in the United States.

Although Santiago writes primarily in English, she has translated some of her own novels into Spanish and is developing a substantial readership in Puerto Rico and other Spanish-speaking countries.