Recently I read Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago. In the last blog post I only read about 25 pages of the book and I basically had no idea what the book was going to reflect on. In the last blog post I stated that the memoir was a reflection of her success of going to Harvard University(stated in the author's biography), but that is not what the book is about at all. It was actually about the experience she had in life from 13 to 21.
The book stayed consistent throughout and I actually enjoyed the way it was written. The amazing detail made me feel as if I were sitting right next to her in 1965. There are many pros to this book including: the details, the juiciness of her life, and need for me to not stop reading it. The only con I had with the book is that it didn't become juicy until about ¾ of the book was done. But I understand that this is nonfiction and that this is someone's life we are reading about. The only question that I really have for this book is: What happens next? The book basically leaves you hanging and it stops just before her 21st birthday. Hopefully there is a third book. Anyway below is what the book is actually about and my thoughts on why she made the decisions she made in life.
The memoir actually starts out slowly. I didn't expect it to be fast paced or anything because it is a person's life but, I did expect it to move a little faster than it did. Santiago is basically explaining how she didn't know a lot of English, how she learned it and became an actress at a performing arts school, and how she met people and stereotypes that she had not thought existed. In the memoir she explains racial tensions and explains how she was not Puertorican, in America, but Spanish. She learned in the acting business that she was not an asset because of her puertorican background. I think that her background was a important aspect in the memoir that made it interesting. If she wasn't puertorican and if she were Caucasian than her life would be completely different. She would have gotten parts in plays and she would probably be successful, as an actress and a dancer, and not have written this book explaining the very crazy details of her life.
After graduating high school, and she was the first in her family to do so, she got jobs and went to school part time. This confused me because in the biography it was stated that she went to Harvard University, but it is possible she might have gone after the age of 21. She graduates and meets lots of new people from her many jobs, plays, and classes. She meets some of her best friends at her job as and office secretary over the years. Her best friends Regina and Shoshana were there for long periods of time and helped her through things that she never thought she would get through. Unfortunately her best friends leave her to do something else with their lives. This is important because they contribute to the overall theme of the book.
From graduating on, she was partially independent because she was out of the house, where she lived with her strict puertorican mother, to go to school/ work. This means she could secretly date men, which is something she could not do before. She dated many men and fell in and out of love with them. This is a consistent theme because without the vivid details of the experiences that she had with these men, the book would be absolutely boring. After she started to date men the book got more interesting. I mean at one point in the book she was going to marry a man that she met just 3 hours before he proposed to her. And to make matters even worse the man that she was going to marry stole planes for a living! Luckily she called off the wedding 2 days before they were going to get married. Other guys she met were minor but added more drama to her life that I didn't think happened in real life. But one man named Ulvi, a famous Turkish film director, was the most important. After knowing Ulvi for just a week, after asking Santiago to play the lead in one of his films, she lost her virginity to him, while some guys she dated for years wouldn't have even touched her because of her strict morals taught by her mother. I think that Ulvi is the most important guy Santiago ever dated not only because he was her longest relationship and that Santiago lost her virginity to him, but because he created the hardest decision for Santiago: the love of him or the love of her beloved Mami.
The overall theme of this book is: Other things may change us, but we start and end with family. Santiago changed remarkably when she came to America. She wanted to be more American, with makeup and high skirts. Then when she graduated she became a different person with different men. But in the end she always came home. The last chapter of the book is devoted to her mother. It explains how Ulvi wants her to leave her mother's house to come live with him without marriage. Knowing the only thing that her mother wanted from her, other than a great education, was marriage(which is why she didn't leave her mother's house until he was 22). The last passage summed up the whole book and made me realize the theme of the book, “Over the seven months we had known each other I had relinquished my will to his. I'd stopped seeing my friends, stopped dancing, ran from work straight into his arms. But I still went home at night to sleep under Mami's roof. Without say word, Ulvi was asking me to give up too, to choose between them... Covers were pulled over my head to block out the noise, the confusion, the drama of my family's life, I knew, just as Ulvi knew when he asked, that I had made my choice.” ( Santiago 310). It explains how people come and go but family is forever.
Overall this book was AMAZING! I want to know what happens to the rest of her life. Her acknowledgements explain that she is married and has two children and that she graduated from Harvard, which makes me want to know how she got there. This is such a descriptive book and I hope there are more of them I can read them.
The book stayed consistent throughout and I actually enjoyed the way it was written. The amazing detail made me feel as if I were sitting right next to her in 1965. There are many pros to this book including: the details, the juiciness of her life, and need for me to not stop reading it. The only con I had with the book is that it didn't become juicy until about ¾ of the book was done. But I understand that this is nonfiction and that this is someone's life we are reading about. The only question that I really have for this book is: What happens next? The book basically leaves you hanging and it stops just before her 21st birthday. Hopefully there is a third book. Anyway below is what the book is actually about and my thoughts on why she made the decisions she made in life.
The memoir actually starts out slowly. I didn't expect it to be fast paced or anything because it is a person's life but, I did expect it to move a little faster than it did. Santiago is basically explaining how she didn't know a lot of English, how she learned it and became an actress at a performing arts school, and how she met people and stereotypes that she had not thought existed. In the memoir she explains racial tensions and explains how she was not Puertorican, in America, but Spanish. She learned in the acting business that she was not an asset because of her puertorican background. I think that her background was a important aspect in the memoir that made it interesting. If she wasn't puertorican and if she were Caucasian than her life would be completely different. She would have gotten parts in plays and she would probably be successful, as an actress and a dancer, and not have written this book explaining the very crazy details of her life.
After graduating high school, and she was the first in her family to do so, she got jobs and went to school part time. This confused me because in the biography it was stated that she went to Harvard University, but it is possible she might have gone after the age of 21. She graduates and meets lots of new people from her many jobs, plays, and classes. She meets some of her best friends at her job as and office secretary over the years. Her best friends Regina and Shoshana were there for long periods of time and helped her through things that she never thought she would get through. Unfortunately her best friends leave her to do something else with their lives. This is important because they contribute to the overall theme of the book.
From graduating on, she was partially independent because she was out of the house, where she lived with her strict puertorican mother, to go to school/ work. This means she could secretly date men, which is something she could not do before. She dated many men and fell in and out of love with them. This is a consistent theme because without the vivid details of the experiences that she had with these men, the book would be absolutely boring. After she started to date men the book got more interesting. I mean at one point in the book she was going to marry a man that she met just 3 hours before he proposed to her. And to make matters even worse the man that she was going to marry stole planes for a living! Luckily she called off the wedding 2 days before they were going to get married. Other guys she met were minor but added more drama to her life that I didn't think happened in real life. But one man named Ulvi, a famous Turkish film director, was the most important. After knowing Ulvi for just a week, after asking Santiago to play the lead in one of his films, she lost her virginity to him, while some guys she dated for years wouldn't have even touched her because of her strict morals taught by her mother. I think that Ulvi is the most important guy Santiago ever dated not only because he was her longest relationship and that Santiago lost her virginity to him, but because he created the hardest decision for Santiago: the love of him or the love of her beloved Mami.
The overall theme of this book is: Other things may change us, but we start and end with family. Santiago changed remarkably when she came to America. She wanted to be more American, with makeup and high skirts. Then when she graduated she became a different person with different men. But in the end she always came home. The last chapter of the book is devoted to her mother. It explains how Ulvi wants her to leave her mother's house to come live with him without marriage. Knowing the only thing that her mother wanted from her, other than a great education, was marriage(which is why she didn't leave her mother's house until he was 22). The last passage summed up the whole book and made me realize the theme of the book, “Over the seven months we had known each other I had relinquished my will to his. I'd stopped seeing my friends, stopped dancing, ran from work straight into his arms. But I still went home at night to sleep under Mami's roof. Without say word, Ulvi was asking me to give up too, to choose between them... Covers were pulled over my head to block out the noise, the confusion, the drama of my family's life, I knew, just as Ulvi knew when he asked, that I had made my choice.” ( Santiago 310). It explains how people come and go but family is forever.
Overall this book was AMAZING! I want to know what happens to the rest of her life. Her acknowledgements explain that she is married and has two children and that she graduated from Harvard, which makes me want to know how she got there. This is such a descriptive book and I hope there are more of them I can read them.
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