ELA  /  7th Grade  /  Unit 13: When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir (2020)

When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir (2020)

Students read Esmeralda Santiago's memoir about her childhood in Puerto Rico and her subsequent move to New York, exploring themes of cultural identity, social mobility and the American Dream.

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ELA

Unit 13

7th Grade

This unit has been archived. To view our updated curriculum, visit our 7th Grade English course.

Unit Summary

In the second unit of the year, students will read a memoir about Esmeralda Santiago’s childhood in Puerto Rico filled with tenderness and contention, carribbean beauty as well as poverty.  Santiago's story offers an insight into the identity conflict that Puerto Rican Americans find themselves in. Is Negi (Santiago’s nickname for “negrita”) black or white? Is she rural or urban? Is she Puerto Rican or American?  When her mother, Mami, leaves for New York with her seven (soon to be eleven) children, Esmeralda, the oldest, learns to overcome new social rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity.  In this coming of age memoir, Santiago captures her journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from helping her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard University.

Importantly, this memoir will serve as a vehicle to address the seventh grade theme of American Dream. Students will analyze Esmeralda and her family’s experience as Puerto Ricans in New York and question whether all people in the U.S. have equal access to success. By the end, the reader learns that Esmeralda eventually moves out of poverty and graduates from Harvard University.  But has she achieved the American Dream?  And if so, at what cost?  Students will ask whether one must give up her culture in order to achieve success.  By the end, it is not clear what Santiago believes; she can sing all the lyrics of the Puerto Rican national anthem and is motivated by the smell of a guava, but conveys that she no longer feels Puerto Rican by the title of her book, When I Was Puerto Rican. Students will grapple with these questions about the American Dream through discussion and written responses. Additionally, students will explore other coming-of-age themes that surface in the text such as romantic love as depicted in the media and gender norms in Puerto Rican culture.  

Students will also continue to develop the fundamental skills and habits around several key practices in class: vocabulary building, annotating text, literary conversation, independent reading and evidence-based writing.  As students read, discuss, and write about the text, they will examine how an author makes deliberate decisions around tone, theme, mood, conflict, juxtaposition and point of view to convey meaning to the reader. This unit has a particular focus on figurative language and symbolism as Santiago’s writing is densely packed with flowery descriptions of her girlhood.  Overall, students will emerge from this unit with a deeper understanding of the American Dream and stronger skills for interpreting figurative language.

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Texts and Materials

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Core Materials

Supporting Materials

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Assessment

This assessment accompanies Unit 13 and should be given on the suggested assessment day or after completing the unit.

Unit Prep

Intellectual Prep

  • Read and annotate the Unit Summary and Essential Questions of this unit.
  • Read and annotate the text with Essential Questions in mind. 
  • Take the unit assessment. Focus on questions 1 and 6 (perspective) and 4 (figurative language). Write a mastery response to the essay question. 
  • Lessons that align directly with the assessment:
    • Lessons 6, 7, 9 (figurative language)
    • Lessons 15, 18, 20 (perspective/point of view)
    • Lessons 11, 23, 26, 28 (Essential Questions)
  • Grade the Target Tasks of Lessons: 7, 20, and 23

Essential Questions

  • The American Dream: Is the American Dream attainable for all immigrants? Does Esmeralda achieve the American Dream by the end of the book? If so, at what cost? The title of the book, When I Was Puerto Rican indicates that she no longer feels Puerto Rican. Does one have to assimilate or give up one’s culture in order to achieve the American Dream?
  • Gender Roles: Much of the book's text and subtext concern the different roles men and women are expected to play in Puerto Rican society. Though the men work hard, they are allowed time for recreation; the women work far harder with no time off at all. Women serve men, but they also scorn them. How do the demands made on men and women differ in this culture? (Discussion Question from Da Capo Press Readers' Guides)
  • Author’s Craft: When I Was Puerto Rican is nonfiction, but Santiago relies on many techniques important to fiction writing. What sort of "narrative voice" has she chosen to use? What ideas of Negi's character and culture do we glean from her narrative style? She has chosen to portray her parents and relatives not as fully developed characters but as adults seen from a child's point of view. How does that enhance or detract from the book's impact? (Discussion Question from Da Capo Press Readers' Guides)
  • Love: What ideas of romantic love does Esmeralda receive from the radio programs and romantic novels she devours? How does it differ from the love she sees between her parents?

Writing Focus Areas

Students will focus on organizing their work when comparing two texts. They will continue to dissect the prompt to ensure they fully understand the task at hand, as well as zoom in on the writing process of brainstorming, outlining, and drafting for on demand prompts (test-taking style prompts). Students will not be given graphic organizers but instructed on creating their own outlines from a blank piece of paper. They will ultimately be assessed on whether they addressed the prompt itself, made a structured and accurate claim, previewed strong reasons in their leads, and grouped information into meaningful paragraphs.

Literary Analysis Writing Focus Areas

FCA #1 – Overall:

  • Addressed the prompt.
  • Made a structured and accurate claim
  • Provided 1-2 pieces of evidence for each reason (can be paraphrased or a direct quote)
  • Each part of the text built their argument, and led to a conclusion without redundancies

FCA #2 – Elaboration:

  • Supported their claim by giving at least three accurate reasons/examples from the text that were parallel and did not overlap, and information to support their reasons
  • Discussed and explained the way that the evidence went with the claim in at least 2 sentences.
  • Put reasons in an order that he thought would be most convincing
  • Provided context for evidence/introduced quotations.

FCA #3 – Organization:

  • Grouped information and related ideas into paragraphs.
  • Put the parts of their writing in the order that most suited their purpose and helped prove their reasons and claim
  • The order of the sections and the internal structure of each section made sense
  • Used topic sentences, transitions, formatting (where appropriate) to clarify the structure of the piece and to highlight their main points.

Vocabulary

Literary Terms

autobiography, memoir, coming of age, metaphor, symbol, hyperbole

Roots and Affixes

im- (not), in- (not), il- (not), sub- (under), re- (again), mor- (death)

Text-based

indifference (16), calloused (26), naïve/naïveté (27 - not explicitly in the text but revisit this word from last unit), irritable (29), sullen (29, 32), exasperated (51), 80), solemn (57), ornate (65), imperialist (71), mournful (87), stern (91), impenetrable (ROOT “im-“) (93), mesmerized (94), grimace (119), taboo (122), envy (122), submerged (ROOT “sub-”, meaning under, as in subway, submarine, subsequent) (124), criticize (125), gaunt (162), fervor (164), vulgar (182), crude (182), morose (ROOT “mor-”, meaning death, as in morgue, mortal) (191), convoluted (194), optimism/optimistic (247)

Idioms and Cultural References

“The tension was so thick, you could cut it with a knife” (22), "The American Dream"

Supporting All Students

In order to ensure that all students are able to access the texts and tasks in this unit, it is incredibly important to intellectually prepare to teach the unit prior to launching the unit. Use the intellectual preparation protocol and the Unit Launch to determine which support students will need. To learn more, visit the Supporting all Students teacher tool.

Content Knowledge and Connections

The American Dream: A national belief/myth of the United States, based on a set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality), in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity, success, and upward social mobility for families, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.

Puerto Rican Migration in 1950s (same time period as the musical West Side Story)

Gender Norms

Marilyn Monroe

American Imperialism

Lesson Map

Common Core Standards

Core Standards

L.7.4
RI.7.1
RI.7.2
RI.7.3
RI.7.4
RI.7.5
RI.7.6
RI.7.9
RL.7.4
SL.7.1
W.7.1
W.7.1.a
W.7.2
W.7.3
W.7.4
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Unit 6

Claiming Our Place: LGBTQ+ Experiences in the United States

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