Almost a Woman
by Esmeralda Santiago
Perseus Books, 1998

Almost a Woman by Puerto Rican novelist Esmeralda Santiago is the riveting story of a girl, ‘casi mujer', that finds her way to adulthood not through one but through many different paths. Esmeralda Santiago really knows how to tell a good story even though it is simply a recollection of her past. This recollection is more than a trip down memory lane; it is a story full of powerful images, clever insights, bittersweet, and some times funny situations, told in a down to earth style. Her personal way of telling her story falls more in the line of story telling than in the line of modern autobiographies, that tend to be sensationalistic and sometimes excessively crude.

Almost a Woman is easy to read. The reader will also find it easy to enjoy. The author lets us in her world as a friend and trusts us with her sojourn into womanhood, something that is more complicated and fascinating than age, physical development or society’s definition of ‘woman’.  The following quotes, taken from the book, are excellent examples of the above:

"In my secret life I wasn’t Esmeralda Santiago, not Negi, not a scared Puerto Rican girl, but a confident, powerful woman whose name changed as I tried to form the perfect me. Esme, I was once. Emmé, another time. Esmeruade, my French class name. I tried Shirley, Sheila, Lenore, but names not based on my own didn’t sound right. So I was Emma, Ralda, or just plain E."  (…)

"In my secret life I wasn’t Puerto Rican. I wasn’t American. I wasn’t anything. I spoke every language in the world, so I was never confused about what people said and could be understood by everyone. My skin was no particular color, so I didn’t stand out as black, white or brown."

This is the most remarkable achievement of Santiago’s recent work. Because, it is easy to just view it as the story of a young Puerto Rican woman that matures and blooms in a strange country and city. But, it is not that simple. Even though the character, Esmeralda, makes a point of her Puerto Rican origins and her longing to return to the Island, as a way to ‘regain her lost Paradise’ or maybe more her lost childhood, her story has no country or race. Who has not experienced, some or most of the mixed feelings that the character herself deals with, in the following quotes, just after her high school graduation?

"Had I stopped to think about my future, I would have been afraid. But what I felt on the bright June day was the thrill of achievement. I’d managed to get through high school without getting pregnant, without dropping out, without algo happening to me. I had a job, and who knew, I might be discovered."  (…)

"That world in Brooklyn from which I derived both comfort and anxiety was home, as was the other world, across the ocean, where my father still wrote poems. As was the other world, the one across the river, where I intended to make my life. I’d have to learn to straddle all of them, a rider on three horses, each headed in a diferent direction."

Almost a Woman is certainly the story of every girl’s passage from the world seen both through the eyes of the older generation and through the eyes of the younger generation of which she belongs.

--Yelena M. Rivera Vale

Your Life is in Your Hands:
The Path to Lasting Health and Happiness
by Krishan Chopra, Deepak Chopra
Penguin USA (Paper)

"I believe that what you eat matters, but what is eating you up matters much more," writes Krishan Chopra, M.D., in Your Life Is in Your Hands. Chopra, father of Deepak Chopra, combines knowledge from Western medicine and Eastern wisdom to help you engage in those habits that lead to health and well-being, and discard those that produce stress and illness. Western medicine is effective, but it needs to be combined with a lifestyle that includes a healthy diet and exercise plus heart-and-mind habits such as positive thoughts, optimism, zest for life, right action, meditation, and spirituality.

Chopra describes how, for example, your chances of getting a major illness are doubled if you are depressed,
anxious, chronically pessimistic, angry, or irritable, and he explains how to alter those emotions. He discusses the concepts of dharma and karma, illustrating them
with family stories. Much of the book is philosophical, spiced with case histories and traditional tales, with advice about how to work these themes into your life.

--Joan Price