An author finds her voice
“Do any other Puerto Ricans work here?” That’s what Esmeralda Santiago wanted to know, as a young woman applying for work. The question often cost her the job, she admitted, but the self-described “loud Puerto Rican girl” felt it her duty to ask what seemingly no one wanted to talk about. “Those questions were always about fairness and things that were happening to people like me. Those questions were really asking, ‘When will we be seen?’” Santiago, a renowned writer, told the crowd at the season’s final diversity dialogue, hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Born in rural, poverty-stricken Puerto Rico, Santiago arrived in Brooklyn with her family when she was 13. She learned English within a year and as a teenager grappled to navigate dual worlds, American and Puerto Rican, a feat she likened to “jumping double Dutch.” Santiago’s struggles with identity — which she chronicled in her at times...