In Conversation with Esmeralda Santiago
By Kathryn Shy
Ross Hall’s auditorium is filled with people and excitement as guests stream into the New York City Botanical Garden teeming with soft murmurs as phones rotate left and right to capture the moment and grasp photos of a brightly lit stage. The auditorium, properly themed with floral seating, welcomes guests into its expanse as they take their seats and wait in anticipation for Esmeralda Santiago.
Before she became a writer, author, screenwriter, and Peabody award winner. Esmeralda Santiago was an inquisitive child. Like most children, she pestered her mother and father with questions, always asking why, which, like most children, often resulted in being shut down or told to stop asking questions. However, the author, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and later raised in Macún, Puerto Rico, a neighborhood in the Tao Baja section of Puerto Rico, did not stop wondering and asking questions. In fact, as a child, the author kept a watchful eye on her school supplies, more importantly, her writing instruments. As Esmeralda felt an unexplainable thrill eyeing those precious items within her desks, especially her pencils, not yet aware of the words she would deliver through the tip of her pencil.
Now at the New York Botanical Gardens, Spring Food Dialogue event, an event hosted by Dr. Jessica B. Harris, the author of High on the Hog, which is also a series on Netflix, and a renowned food expert. Harris would sit face to face with author Esmeralda Santiago as they delve into topics revolving around food, gardening, and her published works. As Esmeralda, the child who kept her eyes smartly on her pencils, published a three-series memoir collection, with her first memoir When I Was Puerto Rico, becoming a renowned classic and best-seller. The memoir discusses Santiago’s life in Macún, Puerto Rico, being the oldest of eleven siblings, her parent’s tumultuous relationship, and her departure from the island of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, New York.
The illuminated stage, where Esmeralda Santiago is scheduled to speak, is decorated with two chairs in the center of the stage. Located behind these chairs is a screen that displays the author’s name alongside an image of guavas. A gesture, which pays tribute to Esmeralda’s first memoir, When I Was Puerto Rican, which devotes an entire step-by-step guide on how to eat a guava. Without delay, the vibrant lights dim as the audience grows quiet, and complete silence engulfs the room. Immediately, Dr. Harris takes the stage. Her vibrant words sing Santiago’s praise as the author sits in the front row listening and smiling as her name escapes Dr. Harris’ lips, and with roaring applause Esmeralda Santiago takes the stage. She slowly walks on stage in a matching turquoise dress and light blue and silver shoes, ambling to her seat, smiling at the hoots and cheers coming from the audience, the soft light touches her silver hair and glasses as she sits and greets the room as Harris joins her shortly after and introduces the audience to another chapter in the Spring Food Dialogue Series.
However, the world is a small place, as these two women who met an hour ago share a remarkable connection. “I happened to have known that Esmeralda Santiago went to the High School of Performing Arts,” Dr. Harris informed the audience, receiving a hoot from an alum amongst the crowd. Harris gesturing between herself and Santiago. “What we both figured out was that I knew she had gone as well [to the high school]. So, in the green room, I said, I have a surprise. In fact, our time at Performing Arts had overlapped.”
Esmeralda gave an all-knowing smile and, with the repertoire of a storyteller, recounted that pivotal life altering moment. “The most important event in my teenage years happened at Performing Arts High School, when Langston Hues was invited to speak at an assembly with the students.” A full circle moment bringing both presenter and writer together as Dr. Jessica Harris during their time at the High School for Performing Arts now, Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School attended the Langston Hues event as a presenter that day. A shadow of what the future held for both women as Harris, who recited the Pledge of Allegiance and presented Hues, stood before pupil Esmeralda Santiago, and introduced her to the literary figure, who would go on to have an impact on the author’s life.
Esmeralda Santiago brought her vibrant imagination from the island of Puerto Rico to New York when she, at thirteen, made the pivotal journey to New York City, accompanied by her mother and two siblings. Yet she was crestfallen to discover the gray bleakness that the concrete jungle thrust in her direction. Santiago, who spoke little English, was straddled between the cusps of shedding an old world and becoming anew as she stumbled to find her way around her new home and its foreign language: English.
“I had never found any literature by any brown people.” Santiago spoke little English upon her arrival in New York. Although when the United States claimed Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American war, English was permanently established on the Spanish-speaking island. While many tried to learn the language and the island today has what is called Spanglish a mixture of English and Spanish, upon arrival, Santiago did not speak English that well. However, the author could read and understand the language perfectly. Now in the United States for only a few years, Santiago felt illuminated to discover a writer that looked like her. Enmeshed in her discovery, Esmeralda placed her feelings into words, “Oh my gosh, there are people like me.” An illustrious meeting that would leave its mark on the author as she would run home to soak in the words of Langston Hues. As reading became a way, Esmeralda taught herself English. “I felt there are possibilities beyond what the environment was telling you were possible.”
Remaining the inquisitive young woman and being introduced to her new life in New York and literary favorites, Esmeralda Santiago carried Puerto Rico in her heart. The island etched with her vibrant memories, which paint the pages of When I Was Puerto Rican.
“How would you describe a Caribbean Garden and what plants would be your must have plants?” The steady and soft rhythmic tone of Dr. Harris’ voice brings the audience to the root of the Spring Food Dialogue series as gardens are a central theme inside the warm auditorium of Ross Hall.
The author gave a wistful expression, grasping the microphone. “My mother was a city girl; my dad had grown up in the sugar fields of Bayamon and Aguas Buena’s; he was more into the land. But she very quickly had to learn how to manage because she had to feed seven children. She would plant yucca, plantains (...) I remember, particularly oregano and rosemary. I remember having eggplant, which is one of my favorite fruit/vegetables.” Santiago, who holds her clandestine memories attached to scent, her preferred sense of the five senses illustrates her vibrant childhood for audicence members. Each moment in perfect synchronization with vital images within When I Was Puerto Rican, Santiago’s first of three memoirs illustrating the author’s life and recollecting those fond memories of her home.
While the author held a smile on her lips and laughed as she pantomimed her mother spreading rosemary through her hair and spreading the imaginary scent around her body. The audience gave a roar of laughter as Dr. Harris jested to the audience regarding Santiago’s mother being trendy. Quickly switching gears and collecting the audience, Harris touched on Santiago’s New Yorker side as she wondered about thirteen-year-old Esmerlda’s Santiago’s experience on what is considered the mainland to numerous island-born Puerto Ricans.
“How did the food change with those migrations?”
The author, who had lived in Puerto Rico her entire life, was stunned to learn from her father that her mother would shift her and her seven siblings at the time to New York. Leaving Santiago at thirteen to discover her new life in New York, a moment which the author states was like a caterpillar going through the stages of metamorphosis as she shed Macún, Puerto Rico, Esmeralda for Brooklyn bound, Esmeralda and had to adapt to New York’s climate, and its different food.
“Pizza” Santiago swallowed a chuckle as the audience gave a soft hum and nods of approval regarding the cheesy slice of pizza. “It was like I was thirteen. We were living in Bushwick at the time, and I remember walking by this restaurant that had this huge pie by the window. And I could smell the oregano, and I remember saying, ‘Mom! What is that smell?’ She said, ‘Oh, this is pizza.’” Smiling at the memory as she continued, “I think that was my first connection with the United States’ culinary taste.”
A taste that for various years, Esmeralda would adopt into her life as she kept her traditions and eating habits from Puerto Rico while residing in New York. And as she grows older, Santiago splits her time between Puerto Rico and Westchester County, New York, where she resides with her husband. After completing her education at Performing Arts High School, Esmeralda went on to graduate from Harvard and ran a media company with her husband before penning the short stories that would go on to become her full-length memoir of When I Was Puerto Rican. Now a year later, after coming off publishing her fictional novel, Las Madres, a story that revolves around four friends and their return to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, Santiago is still as sharp as a tack. Especially after a stroke, which impacted the author’s ability to read and write, forcing her to learn those precious skills once again reminiscent of a young studious Santiago on her way to learn English through books and her discovery of Langston Hues.
Towards the end of the program in that space decorated with floral seating, the author lifted a copy of When I Was Puerto Rican and allowed readers to step into her world, breaking down her instructions on how to eat a guava. As she shut the book's cover, Dr. Harris had one more surprise, scanning the audience with a curious expression, peering at the guests scattered around the auditorium over her glasses. “Earlier some members of the audience were given blue post it notes. Those with blue post it notes stand up, and when given the microphone, share your favorite fruit and tell us why.”
In the center of the stage, Esmeralda Santiago, the author who allowed readers into her world to poke and prod and view the characters of her eleven-sibling household sat as members of the audience rose one-by-one and in the space of Ross Hall amongst its floral decor, told their memoirs. They recollected their favorite fruit accompanied by memories of childhood, family members once alive and now within the ancestral plain, and warm feelings of life. Santiago did not interrupt once, often erupting when a familiar fruit was called forth and joined in with memories of its taste and smell. The author gave the audience the pen and a chance to write their own memories, ending a cold grey afternoon at the Botanical Garden in New York.