When I was Puerto Rican

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21 June 2007

When I was Puerto Rican by E . Santiago

In the novel When I was Puerto Rican , E . Santiago describes casualties of life and hardship faced by a young Puerto-Rican girl in New York This novel unveils racial inequalities and discrimination which force the protagonist to look for personal identity and the self . From the philosophical point of view , identity is defined as 'thinking . that makes every one to be , what he calls self and thereby distinguishes himself from all

other thinking things , in this alone consists personal Identity (personal identity 2007 . Thesis Through the theme of personal identity , Santiago describes hardship and life troubles faced by the young girl in New York

In the novel , ideologies of Otherness regarding race and gender are found within different communities . For instance , coming in New York the protagonist understands that every nationality has its unique identity embodied in values and norms . They form the links between popular-class and elite notions of Self and national identity that are otherwise discursively negated by differences of class and historical experience (Santiago 45 . However similar they may have been in valorizing whiteness over blackness or justifying the oppression of women , the ideological principles responsible for the legitimating of social hierarchies through discourse were differentially operational zed among the popular classes in the promotion of their own communal , class interests . There were many Puerto Rican in New York , and when someone asks a question they say : It 's such a sad song (Santiago 73 . This passage shows that Santiago understands that standards of Otherness within popular-class communities are rationalized through creative expression

For seven years spent in New York , Santiago has tried to find her personal identity and value . The author portrays that the complex racial dimensions of her society are intensified among Puerto Ricans by the unexpected infusion of an array of social attitudes both alien and fundamentally contrary to their own (Santiago 77 . With their policies of racial segregation , racially discriminatory voting practices , white supremacist clubs , and longtime use of terrorist tactics like lynching against blacks , the white North Americans who conquered and governed Puerto Rico brought with them the beliefs and dispositions they had developed in a world where the propagation of racial injustice and the kindling of racial hatred were not simply tolerated . Santiago writes Puerto Rican Why ' Because he says he 's coming back to be happy Doesn 't that sound like he wasn 't happy in New York (Santiago 78 Santiago depicts that Puerto Ricans of all classes are becoming less willing to identify with an African heritage or claim personal affiliation to concepts of blackness (Santiago 75 . Santiago suggests that the ways in which boundaries of identity are stretched may have served to reinforce rather than to subvert the importance of "whitening in the development of popular-class senses of identity (Santiago 87

For Santiago , nationality becomes the social standards by which an individual 's racial identity come to be judged , both...