An Excerpt from "Dreams of a Better Life" in When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
Author: Esmeralda Santiago
Santiago, Esmeralda. When I Was Puerto Rican, Da Capo Press, 2006, pp. 205-207.
2 additions to document , most recent almost 6 years ago
| When | Why |
|---|---|
| Jan-29-20 | Photograph from Puerto Rico Mio |
| Jan-29-20 | from Puerto Rico Mio, by photographer Jack Delano |
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“Next week you will be a teeneyer,” Papi said as we sat on the porch smelling the night air.
i think he did that to make us think more and more attracted to the book
I think that the author wrote “teeneyer” because it shows how her parents and her don’t know english so she tries to show us that by saying “teeneyer”
I think the author used teeneyer to show she doesn’t like speaking english.
“What’s that?”
“In the United States, when children reach the age of thirteen, they are called teeneyers. It comes from the ending of the word in English. Thir-teen. Teenager.”
I see that the family has been using the us as guidance from the us since Puerto Rico had different language they are getting used to the American language
I counted in English to myself. “So I will be a teeneyer until I’m twenty?”
“That’s right. Soon you’ll be wanting to rock and roll.” He laughed as if he had told a very funny joke.
“I don’t like rock and roll,” I protested. Too noisy. And the words are all in English. I don’t understand the songs.”
“Mark my words,” he said. “When you’re a teeneyer it’s like something comes over you. Rock and roll sounds good. Believe me.” He laughed as if I knew what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time.
“Well, it’s not going to happen to me.” I pouted and ignored his chuckles at my expense.
“Just wait,” he said. “Once you’re in New York you’ll become a regular teeneyer Americana.”
“I’m not going to New York.”
New York is seen as a big opportunity from Puerto Rico and other foreign country’s .As a person who grew up in New York i see how this is interpreted knowing people who have been in this situation.
“Your mother’s talking about moving there.”
The mother of esmeralda was planning to move to New York with her.
In this paragraph the father tells the family for the first time that the mother will be moving to New York alone. This means that as a reader is learning this at the same time as the family. This could put the reader in an awkward position where they feel like they are there, learning about this news along with the family.
My stomach fell to my feet. “What?!”
“Didn’t you tell them, Monin?” He called into the house, where Mami and the kids watched a program on our very own black and white television set.
“Tell them what?” She came out to the porch, hands on hips.
“That you’re moving to New York.” He didn’t look at her; he just spit out the words like phlegm into the night.
“Pablo …,” she said as one might murmur a prayer.
“Is it true Mami?” Laughter came from the living room where my sisters and brothers watched Don Cholito’s slapstick.
“How can you be so cruel?” She said to Papi, “You know I have no choice.”
“You have a choice,” he growled.
negis dad was kinda trying to paint negis mom as a bad person when all shes trying to do is create a better life for negi and herself
The father is trying to make the father look bad by saying that she doesn’t have to move and bring the children with them and trying to blame everything on her
“Stay here? Put up with your pocavergüenzas?”
“I’ve given you a home. I’m not a rich man, but we’ve always had enough to eat.”
“Do you consider that enough?” Her voice was tense and rising in pitch.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Monin. I just don’t know.”
“I’ve lived with you for fourteen years. We have seven children together. You won’t marry me. You won’t leave me alone.”
“Is that what you want? Marriage? What would that do? I’ve recognized them all. They all have my last name …”
“Mami, Papi, please.”
Rage transformed them; a red fury choked the good in both of them and bottled the love they once felt into a dark place where neither could find it.
“Please stop …”
Their hands formed into fists; their eyes squinted into slits that sent out invisible daggers.
“Please, Mami and Papi …”
They growled words that made no sense, echoes of all the hurts and insults, the dinners gone to waste, the women, the abandonments.
I crouched against the wall and watched them injure each other without touching each other, hurling words that had the same effect as acid on metal. Each word diminished them, flattened them against the night until they were puppets, pointing fingers in each other’s faces. Their voices extinguished night sounds, and darkness swallowed everything but these two people I loved, the overhead light a dim spotlight that disfigured their features into grimaces. One by one Delsa, Norma, Héctor, Alicia, Edna, and Raymond came out on the porch, their eyes round as guavas, tears glistening the tips of their lashes. In their passion Mami and Papi had forgotten about us. They were real only to one another. We huddled in a corner, afraid that if we left them, they might eat each other.
the children feel responsible for their parents actions, they feel the need to be present during their arguments so the they can mediate the situation. they have to act like adults to compensate for their parents
negis father and mother are so busy arguing trying to point the finger at one another that they arent even noticing how bad negis reaction to this news is yestarday in my group we spoak about something that relates to this how sometimes people are so caught up in their own emotions they tend to ignore others
Added January 29, 2020 at 10:09pm
by Kiran Chaudhuri
Title: Photograph from Puerto Rico Mio
Added January 29, 2020 at 10:40pm
by Kiran Chaudhuri
Title: from Puerto Rico Mio, by photographer Jack Delano
General Document Comments 0
There is an obvious barrier between our speaker and the language of the country she will soon move too. She rejects the western culture
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