When I Was Puerto Rican Literary Analysis Essay

When I was Puerto Rican Literary Analysis Essay(v1)

Al jibaro nunca se le quite la mancha de platano — these are the first words of Esmeralda Santiago’s When I was Puerto Rican. The phrase is agreat representative as to what the novel talks about. It means that somehow, no matter what people do, they are bound to the identity they are born and raised into.This is the case of main characterNegi, a puerto rican girl that reaffirms this idea as she experiences the difference between life in Puerto Rico and being Puerto Rican in the Unites States. According to Webster’s Online Dictionary,cultural identity is the collective characteristics of a group or culture. The identity as it is portrayed in the novel shows Santiago’s perception of what the Puerto Rican society is all about.Santiago uses her childhood experiences to demonstrate what the Puerto Rican cultural identity means to her.
A very fundamental part to Puerto Rican identity are the traditions of christmas time. PuertoRican holidays are very different from the classic ‘White Christmas’ of the United States - it is a time to bring out cultural roots through music. Puerto Rican folkloric music is an important key tounderstanding the country’s tropical Christmas. Music derivatives form new genres, like parrandas, ‘ in which people went from house to house, singing, […]and celebrating’ (p. 40). Parrandas have amix of different influential ethnic groups in Puerto Rico, like adapted arabic panderos or frame drums, spanish guitars, indigenous güiro and maracas, and cowbells from jibaro livestock. Another form ofholiday music were aguinaldos. ‘songs about the birth of Jesus and the joys of spending Christmas around family and friends’ (p.40). This genre integrated musical instruments like the cuatro, aneight-string guitar and the national instrument, the tiple, a three or six string guitar native to Puerto Rico, and a bordonúa, a six-string guitar, also native. Aguinaldos referred to the religious...