Esmeralda Santiago

LAS MADRES …and more Puerto Rican lore

Esmeralda Santiago is the matrilineal voice of the Puerto Rican experience. 

In 2023, she authored the novel Las Madres, published by Alfred A. Knopf, about five women’s journeys from Puerto Rico in the Seventies to the Bronx circa 2017 - and the ties that hold them together. Esmeralda is also the best-selling and award-winning author of the memoirs When I Was Puerto Rican, Almost a Woman, which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning film for PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre, and The Turkish Lover; the novels America’s Dream and Conquistadora, and a children’s book, A Doll For Navidades. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and House & Garden, among other publications, as well as NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

…And she’s dyed in the wool Katonah, having lived here with her husband, Frank Cantor, for thirty-two years, and raised their kids right here in town. Their son, Lucas, now lives in Los Angeles and works as a composer for films, and their daughter, Ila, teaches Jazz in Ashland, Oregon.

Much of Esmeralda’s writing is drawn from her personal experience. “I try to keep it as close to non-fiction as possible, and to tell a story at the same time,” she explains. “I was born in San Juan, but raised in Macún, a rural barrio in Toa Baja. I was the eldest of seven children in a family of landless peasants. We were poor. We had no books, but with some of my father’s brothers and their families living down the road, Macún was a rich place for stories. My father brought newspapers from the towns where he worked, and I learned to read from them, and found a larger world beyond our barrio.”

Esmeralda continues, “When I was 12, my youngest brother, who was 6 at the time, was in a serious accident that required my mother to bring him to New York for medical attention. He ended up losing two toes, but then my grandmother, who was already living in New York, convinced my mother to bring all her children to New York. I was thirteen years old when my parents broke up and she brought us to Brooklyn, and she found work as a Seamstress in the Garment District. I write about real people, with struggles and flaws, and try to be honest, and include the failures as well as the triumphs in my work. My brother’s accident is a big part of the reason we came to the United States, and it plays a big part in When I Was Puerto Rican.”

“When we arrived, I didn’t know English, had never seen snow, and had certainly never lived in a tall buildings in a metropolis like New York. I learned to read English from illustrated children’s books, but couldn’t pronounce the words at first because the vowels were foreign to my tongue. Only eighteen months after arrival in the U.S., I auditioned for and was accepted to Performing Arts High School. It was there I learned how to properly speak and pronounce English. At the school, there was an emphasis on voice and diction, meant to eradicate the accents students brought to the school from Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. In my case, they helped me to soften my Puerto Rican accent,” 

Right after high school, Esmeralda was hired as an extra in the film of Up the Down Staircase. “I didn’t really like being an actor. I wanted to be a producer, and thought I’d instead enjoy working behind the scenes with a bird’s-eye view of all the action.” She worked full-time and studied part time for eight years after high school. “I was ambitious, and wanted a career, not a series of jobs.” To advance professionally, she needed to finish her college degree. She applied to Harvard - and got in, with a full scholarship! She graduated with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies. “After college, I went on to earn a Masters in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence. I was interested in filmmaking. I met my husband a few months after graduation. He’s a second-generation USAmerican from a Russian Jewish family. He didn’t speak a word of Spanish, but has a smattering now, and we’ve been married 45 years! When we bought a house in a town 30 miles South of Boston - I felt I was the only Puerto Rican around! When I took our children to the playground, other mothers thought I was a Nanny, because the only other Spanish speakers they came across were domestic workers.” In the mid-seventies, Esmeralda worked for the Suffolk County District Attorney, south of Boston, as a proposal writer and consultant working on behalf of underrepresented minorities and families trying to break the cycle of domestic violence. At the same time, she and her husband founded CANTOMEDIA, a film company.  “My main job was writing educational films and documentaries. Most recently, our focus has been on films about contemporary artists.” 

All along, Esmeralda wrote and published personal essays about her experience as a Puerto Rican living in the United States. “I was writing 1,000 word essays each week for a local newspaper, and some were picked-up by the Boston Globe,The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. Radcliffe Magazine asked me to write a story about my mother’s experience in New York’s Garment District for an issue they were publishing about Women At Work. Merloyd Lawrence, a respected editor in Boston, reached out to me because she loved the essay. It was her idea that I write a memoir. That was in 1990, when I’d just started a Masters in Fiction Writing degree at Sarah Lawrence. Chapters from When I Was Puerto Rican were from my thesis. It was published in 1993, when I was 45!  I had a late start as a writer, but it felt I’d been heading in that direction all along. Almost a Woman was published in 1998, and then The Turkish Lover in 2004. In 2008, when I was working on the manuscript for Conquistadora, I had a stroke affecting the Wernicke’s area of my brain - and lost all ability to read or write in Spanish or English. I had to learn how to read in Spanish and English all over again, the way I did as a kid. Like I did when I first came to New York,  I studied children’s picture books in the early part of the process. I can’t produce quite as much as I used to before my stroke, but writing has become therapeutic. . …I’ve lectured and written about my stroke and recovery, and it’s included in some medical journals.

“Writing Las Madres was a labor of love, and a signature work for me,” Esmeralda says. “Historians are great at providing information about events, but it seems to me they forget ‘History’ is created by people. I write about people who don’t get much of a voice. Most of us don’t live in wealth, in comfort, or in safety. I write to offer a more realistic version of Puerto Rican history and culture in the archipelago and beyond its shores. ”

Esmeralda is a bit timid and without pretense, yet she’s confident and comfortable in herself and in her writing. She’s quiet and warm. Polite, but unapologetic. Sweet, but circumspect. Her demeanor belies her literary prowess. And it takes a special moment for her to show some pride, and admit, “You know, in Katonah, besides my large circle of friends, I have anonymity…but in Puerto Rico, I’m recognized on the street. When I Was Puerto Rican is required reading in school, and my work has been read all over the world in numerous languages. I’ve narrated all my books for audio, in Spanish and in English! …As a matter of fact, I’m walking over now to Kessler Studios to work on the  Spanish audio book for Las Madres.” 

The Washington Post hails Las Madres as “a vibrant portrayal of women supporting one another through disability and hardship,” and the novel has been embraced by readers around the country. Following a months-long book tour, including stops in Puerto Rico and across the United States, Esmeralda is finally settled back home in Katonah, where she’s looking forward to getting to work on her next book.