Esmeralda Santiago Dreams Her Reality

The Book Case

ABC News

Fiction, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.1 • 766 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It might seem a bit presumptuous to write a three volume autobiography about the first 29 years of your life, wouldn’t you think? But Esmerelda Santiago lived an almost unbelievable first thirty years and writes in such a personal fashion, that reading her story makes you feel as if you’re in the company of a good friend speaking just to you. The first volume, When I was Puerto Rican tells the story of growing up in abject poverty in Puerto Rico with no expectations of anything more. The second volume, Almost a Woman tells of her coming to the United States terrified about what life would be like and through the most improbable of circumstances finding herself in an esteemed school for the performing arts though speaking almost no English. The third volume, The Turkish Lover finds Esmerelda realizing she is a whole lot smarter than the man in her life - applying to Harvard and graduating Magna Cum Laude! How is that for 29 years? If you’re intimidated by three short volumes, just try the first volume and see if you don’t want to go on. And if you’d like to be charmed, listen to Esmerelda’s conversation with us. Books Mentioned in the Podcast: When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago The Turkish Lover by Esmeralda Santiago Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago América's Dream by Esmeralda Santiago The Iliad by Homer The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk Free Puerto Rico by Pedro Albizu Campos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by SimplySafe.
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0:28.5	T's and C's Apply.
0:35.8	Welcome to the bookcase.
0:37.4	I'm Charlie Gibson.
0:38.3	And I am Kate Gibson, and if I had jingle bells, I would be jingling them just so, you know, to go with this soundtrack, but I don't have any.
0:44.4	Well, this is our last podcast for 2022. It's been a good year, Kate, and we have had such an embarrassment of riches in the authors to whom we have spoken. Oh, absolutely. I want to say
0:55.8	thank you to all of the authors who were crazy enough. Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry, kind enough to come on
1:00.7	our show and let us pick their brains about their processes, their writing, their novels,
1:06.2	their nonfiction works. It's just been amazing. Well, when we started out, we said to people, you know, we know you're not going to read every book we feature, but we will feature books that we like, A.
1:16.8	And B, we hope that you will, when you finish listening to the podcast, say, I might take a look at that.
1:23.6	And if we get a percentage to do that, we've been successful.
1:27.4	But what has surprised me, Kate, I think, is that this has turned out to be a masterclass in writing, that we have learned so much about how really great novelists go about the work that they do.
1:39.2	And same for nonfiction.
1:40.7	Absolutely.
	...

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