ALA Booklist
Many individuals who grew up in the barrios, whether of Puerto Rico, Brooklyn, or elsewhere, may have found life to be one long, continuous struggle for survival. In Santiago's memoir, she lovingly recalls her own passage through childhood, when her mother moved her children away from their father and the humble dwelling they all shared in the country outside San Juan to a Brooklyn apartment adjoining the projects. For Santiago, who at age 14 was an exceptional student but still spoke little English, the ticket out of the cycle of poverty was acceptance to New York City's High School of Performing Arts. At once heart-wrenching and remarkably inspirational, this lyrical account depicts rural life in Puerto Rico amid the hardships and tensions of everyday life and Santiago's awakening as a young woman, who, although startled by culture shock, valiantly confronted New York head-on. When in the epilogue Santiago refers to her studies at Harvard, it is both a stirring and poignant reminder of the capacities of the human spirit. (Reviewed Oct. 1, 1993)
School Library Journal
YA-Esmerelda and her seven siblings live in a corrugated metal shack in Puerto Rico. She is uprooted as a result of poverty and her parents' quarreling and suffers blows to her ego from their expectations of her. The girl goes to New York, where her grandmother lives, and must rely on her intelligence and talents to help her survive in an alien world in which being Puerto Rican is not advantageous. Her story rings true and will be an inspiration to YAs forced to make their own way in a sometimes hostile environment.-Ginny Ryder, Lee High School, Fairfax County, VA
Kirkus Reviews
A beguiling record of a tremendous journey, epic in its own way, from childhood in a vibrant Puerto Rican barrio to triumph at Harvard, with a defining pause in a drab Brooklyn along the way. Now a filmmaker with her own company, Santiago, eldest of 11 children, was born in a rural barrio. Her parents—the beautiful, ambitious Mami and the frustrated artist Papi—weren't married, a source of constant family tension in her childhood. Meanwhile, the family lived in a house made of rippled metal sheets, a giant version of the lard cans used to haul water from public fountains,'' and grew its own fruits and vegetables. But despite the crudeness, there was room to play, fresh air, and a freedom that would never be replicated in their subsequent homes as the author's mother, tiring of Papi's infidelities, moved the children time and again to town, into lodgings or relatives' homes, until reconciliations brought everyone together again. The reconciliations grew more and more infrequent, however, and Santiago, a good student, had to change schools and suffer the jeers of city-bred children, as well as adjust to the often harsh regimens imposed by the differing households she was forced to live in. Finally, after Papi categorically refused to marry her, Mami decided—after traveling to N.Y.C. with one of the children, who needed medical treatment—to move to Brooklyn. But the new house proved to be a menacing place, where
even snow was dangerous'' as children threw deadly snow-covered rocks at one another. Santiago was ambitious, though, determined to get out of Brooklyn ``and desperate to feel grass under [my] feet instead of pavement.'' She finally got her wish by excelling academically and winning a place in New York's High School of Performing Arts. Cleareyed, quietly powerful, and often lyrical: a story of true grit."