Anastacio Carrillo

After reading both Esmeralda Santiago’s “When I Was Puerto Rican” and Howard Garner’s “Five Minds of the Future”, I decided that I enjoyed Esmeralda’s short story and was more entertained by it overall. Generally, I’d say I always prefer a story where an author goes into specific details about their past experiences and tells a story rather than a “story” that’s  just more on the informative/educational side. Esmeralda’s story is even slightly relatable to me, my mother experiences the same difficulties due to language barriers and my sister or I would always be her translators. Seeing how stubborn Esmeralda was about wanting to be in the 8th grade because she was about to be placed in 7th was also enjoyable and just being a casual reader, it still made me glad that she got her way. Even the dialogue was a great addition, Esmeralda trying her best to speak English and although she made mistakes, it was enough to get her point across. Then, seeing her persevere in her classes despite being placed amongst the “dumb” kids and having one of the highest scores on her midterms was an extremely difficult accomplishment considering she had just started learning English a few months ago.