“Degrees of Puertoricanness” A Gendered Look at Esmeralda Santiago's When I was Puerto Rican

Abstract

Esmeralda Santiago has claimed that her role as a writer is to document the multiple cultural experiences of Puerto Ricans, or what she calls “degrees of puertoricanness.” Given the critical debates about her autobiographical text, When I was Puerto Rican, which some critics suggest is assimilationist, what does it mean for her to assume the role of a Puerto Rican cultural historian? Where does her work fit into the larger discourses of Puerto Rican and Latino cultural paradigms? In this paper, I argue that by labeling and dismissing certain Latino texts as “assimilationist,” we may be risking the many contributions that more nuanced readings of such texts can make to the fields of Puerto Rican and Latino Cultural Studies. In this case I analyze Esmeralda Santiago's text through a feminist lens, and suggest that such an analyses of this text demonstrates that Santiago is proposing a particularly gendered cultural paradigm for Puerto Rican women.