Esmeralda Santiago’s autobiographically based novel When I Was Puerto Rican follows the story of Esmeralda from age four to adolescence and her journey from Puerto Rico New York. Her story begins in rural Machón at age four where her and her family move to “a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of a red circle of dirt” (7). Thus begins Esmeralda’s journey into a life surrounded by poverty and responsibilities. Her warring parents and seven siblings lead a life filled with chaos and caring as Esmeralda begins her trip trough childhood. Esmeralda is often expected to handle adult like responsibilities at a young age. Before she is senorita she is expected to care for the house and siblings and when she fails her mother says “you’re lazy that’s the problem. You think everything will be handed to you” (124). Despite being weighed down with responsibilities Esmeralda still manages to be bright and creative child taking in the world around her. She is immersed in her jíbaro culture as well as the culture of her city dwelling paternal grandparents and extended family. The pillars of Esmeralda’s young life are the ideas that a woman should never become jamona and what lo que un
Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Development Theory
Freud felt that personality is formed in the first few years of life when children deal with the conflicts within themselves over finding a compromise between their own inborn biological urges and the restrictions and rules placed on these by their social environment. Freud felt that children must experience five psychosexual stages to mature into a functioning adult. In the case of Esmeralda Santiago we join her story in the phallic stage which according to Freud begins at 3 years and should end around age 6. Freud contends that during this phallic stage the child will be attached to the parent of the opposite sex but will later come to identify with the same sex parent. Is Esmeralda’s case we see early evidence of overt attachment to her father. For example in the beginning of the book Esmeralda is about 5 years old with her father when she “followed him holding a can…”(7) when her mother calls to her she begs “I’m working with Papi” (8). Esmeralda then goes on to disobey her mother and only feels vindicated when her father noticing the struggle takes her side by saying “Let her stay. I can use the help (9). At this point in her young life Esmeralda longs for her father’s attention and basks in it in accordance with Freud’s phallic stage theory of development. Yet when her father leaves home supposedly to go be with other women she identifies with her mothers pain. She writes “Men I was learning were sinvergüenzas, which meant they had no shame and indulged in behavior that never failed to surprise women but caused them much suffering” (29). As Esmeralda enters school age she enters what Freud refers to as the latency stage. This stage according to Freud should exists from age 6 years to puberty. The latency stage should be a time of relative sexual calm between the more turbulent psychosexual stages Freud lays out. Latency should be a period where the child has mostly same sex friends and is able to spend time working on social skills and personal views about themselves and the world. Esmeralda shows some signs of the latency stage when she enters to school to find a “world suddenly bigger, a vast place of other adults and children whose lives where similar, but whose shadings I couldn’t really e
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