When I Was Puerto Rican Quotes

“For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“Envy, Doña Lola had once said, eats at you from the inside and turns your eyes green when you look at the person of whom you’re jealous.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir

“There were more fights, more arguments, more yelling in the night, more long absences. Until it seemed as if anything would be better than living with these people who hated each other.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“I would just as soon remain jamona than shed that many tears over a man.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“It seemed too complicated, as if each one of us were really two people, one who was loved and the official one who, I assumed, was not.    ”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir

“...and the shortcuts through the woods that led to the next barrio where all sorts of pocavergüenzas took place.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“El bohío de la loma, bajo sus alas de paja, siente el frescor mañanero y abre sus ojos al alba. Vuela el pájara del nido. Brinca el gallo de la rama. A los becerros, aislados de las tetas de las vacas, les corre por el hocico leche de la madrugada. Las mariposas pululan —rubí, zafir, oro, plata...—: flores huérfanas que rondan buscando a las madres ramas...”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir

“We came to Macun when I was four, to a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of a circle of red dirt.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“They think we're taking their jobs.'
'Are we?'
'There's enough work in the United States for everybody, but some people think some work is beneath them. Me, if I have to crawl on all fours to earn a living, I'll do it. I'm not proud that way.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“I scrambled out, irritated, wondering why parents never answered questions but seemed to have all the answers.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“The silence around her was total, not rich and full like Abuela’s when she crocheted, but empty and sad and lonesome.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir

“He’s younger than you are,” she told Mami. “You should be ashamed.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir

“Ay Dios Mío Santo, help me make it through their puberties!”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir

“Plito, chicken
Gallina, hen
Lápiz, pencil
y Pluma, pen.
Ventana, window
Puerta, door
Maestra, teacher
y Piso, floor.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir