When I Was Puerto Rican

The main character Negi is an adolescent puerto rican girl living with her parents and many younger siblings. Being the oldest she is left with many responsibilities including taking care of her younger siblings while her mother is at work because most of the time the father is not there, he is usually running around with other women which seems to be what many husbands in Puerto Rico do.  Their family moves around a lot, mainly the cause of the mom wanting to get away from her husband that she ends up forgiving, and they have lived in both the city and countryside of Puerto Rico. Negi prefers the bucolic lifestyle and wants to be from the barrio and she is proud of it!

     Along with growing up Negi seems to be maturing, not just mentally but physically as well. She, already, has experienced things that no regular preteen has gone through like seeing the private parts of the opposite sex and letting them see yours; getting “checked out” by not only a man, but your principal! I doubt she’ll be getting good grades at that school!

     My group for lit circles is the best I could’ve been matched with.  Each one of my group members is always prepared with their assigned jobs to every lit circle and we get very deep into discussions. I feel like we can really relate to Negi and her family in this book because we share the commonality of being Hispanic and there are a lot of ideas and religious aspects that are very similar even though we are Mexican and her family is Puerto rican. Honestly, at first I did not like this book at all, mainly because the prologue was way too descriptive for my taste; I usually don’t even read the prologue. Seriously, I don’t want to read a whole freaking chapter on how a guava looks or what it tastes like or its redolent scent, I’ll Google it! The author could’ve done without the prologue in my opinion because it made me think that this book was going to be about describing nature in puerto rico, I hate when authors describe nature so much because I find it fake. Lesson learned: always skip the prologue. 

WORD COUNT: 371

OH AND I DID GOOGLE IT. SHE COULD'VE JUST SAID IT LOOKED LIKE A TINY WATERMELON FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!