ABSTRACT
Puerto Rican writer Esmeralda Santiago expresses her transcultural latinidad through childhood memories of savoring perfectly ripe guavas gathered from the fields in the Island and an adulthood reality of store bought apples and pears in New York. She writes in When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir:
Today, I stand before a stack of dark green guavas, each perfectly round and hard, each $1.59. The one in my hand is tempting. It smells faintly of late summer afternoons and hopscotch under the mango tree. But this is autumn in New York, and I’m no longer a child. … The guava joins its sisters under the harsh fluorescent lights of the exotic fruit display. I push my cart away, towards the apples and pears of my adulthood, their nearly seedless ripeness predictable and bittersweet.
