 Good morning. Buenos días. Bienvenidos to the San Antonio Public Library. I am Amy Alemani, co-chair of the Sociedad Herencia Puerto Riquena 2019 cultural event. Today you and I continue to celebrate Sociedad Herencia Puerto Riquena's 35th anniversary from its founding in the city of San Antonio in the year 1984. 35 years ago when a group of dedicated Puerto Rican women who cared about their families lived fully but missed their island's traditions, music and culture. Together resourcefully and creatively they developed a plan to promote and maintain their Puerto Rican culture and traditions not only amongst themselves but with the city and its communities. Among Sociedad Herencia Puerto Riquena's hallmarks are the fundraising event, the Puerto Rico Festival in San Antonio for the scholarship program, the annual scholarship program which has awarded over $100,000 and reached over 150 young students. The traditional three Kings Day in the San Fernando Cathedral Hall every January. The cultural events highlighting Puerto Rican culture, musicians such as Victoria Sanabria, Charlie Hernandez, artists and graphic designers such as Antonio Martorel, world-renowned baritone Antonio Barasorda, storytellers like Tina Casanova and writers and authors just like Esmeralda Santiago among others. We are extremely happy and honored to have you and your families join us in our 2019 cultural event images and memories celebrating Esmeralda Santiago's work. This program was made possible in part with a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities so we're very grateful. Let's start by welcoming Miss Haley Holmes who is the administrator of the San Antonio Public Library. Good morning my name is Haley Holmes. I'm the Public Services Administrator for the Central Library. Thank you for joining us today in this partnership with the Puerto Rican Heritage Society and celebrating their 35th anniversary. We're very excited to host the acclaimed Esmeralda Santiago at our beautiful Central Library. Before we begin the program I would like to thank the San Antonio Public Library Foundation for their support as well as now cast essay for their support this morning. I'd also like to thank the Puerto Rican Heritage Society for making this event possible in partnership with our Latino Collection and Resource Center. The Latino Collection and Resource Center which we call LCRC was founded as a cultural resource to chronicle Latino stories and the unique heritage experience and contemporary life of all Latin Americans in the United States. Today is particularly special because we are joined by one of Latino literature's most well-known authors. Esmeralda Santiago's works have defined the literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora tracing her childhood in Puerto Rico and her family's migration to the US. These are life experiences not just similar to many in this room today. On behalf of the San Antonio Public Library I hope you enjoy today's program and explore our beautiful library when the program is over and our Latino Collection and Resource Center which is located on the northwest side of the first floor. Thank you very much. Thank you Haley. She and her team have helped us tremendously so a very special thank you to Haley and the team of the San Antonio Public Library. I now want to ask Ms. Luz Garcia President of Sociedad Herencia Puerto Ricania to join us at the stage. Good morning. Buenos dias. Welcome and thank you for joining us today at this special occasion where Sociedad Herencia Puerto Ricania 35th anniversary and our 2019 cultural event. I want to recognize and say thanks to Humanities Texas to San Antonio Public Library especially to Ramiro Salazar Director to Haley Holmes and their wonderful team and each of you for making today's event possible. Welcome. A million thank yous to our wonderful cultural event committee especially for Olga A.B. Belinda. So we have a small token of appreciation for Olga. You don't know that. Word so hard you will never believe. She has been planning this for more than a year so we are very proud of our members all the participating members but especially of their cultural event that they put long hours to make this happen. So you may ask why we selected Esmeralda Santiago. During this morning you are going to learn why Esmeralda Santiago is Sociedad Herencia Puerto Ricania birthday gift to our San Antonio people and to all of you. Please enjoy your day. Thank you Luz. Now I want to welcome a very special guest today other than Esmeralda She is the news producer for NewsForce San Antonio, Lynette Vega. Good morning. It's a beautiful looking crowd today. I'm so happy that you all are here today to welcome Esmeralda. As Amy said my name is Lynette Vega. I'm a news producer for NewsForce San Antonio and we are also sister stations with Fox 29 and the CW35 here in San Antonio. I'm honored to be here today with you all as well as with the Puerto Rican Heritage Society who is marking 35 years of excellence in San Antonio. Today we're introducing a woman who is remarkable in every way. Esmeralda Santiago is a native Puerto Rican born on our beautiful island. She moved to the United States mainland at the age of 13. She's the eldest of 11 children raised by a strong single mother in Brooklyn, New York who she affectionately calls mommy in her works. There Esmeralda focused her efforts on learning English, helping her mommy adjust to their new surroundings and learning more about her identity. A goal Esmeralda describes during this time period is wanting to be independent, working hard and getting paid for it. It's that need for independence and a growing curiosity that propels her forward into her next successes and what she has many of them. Esmeralda graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and wrote three memoirs. The first titled When I Was Puerto Rican came out in 1993 and was named one of the best memoirs of a generation by Oakwood Book Club. Her next two memoirs almost a woman followed in 1998 and the Turkish Lover in 2004. Esmeralda is also the author of a 2011 epic novel called Conquistadora which tells coming of age stories including that of its heroine who travels to the new world just ahead of the Civil War. Esmeralda is also the author of three novels, a children's book and her works have also been turned into films including her first novel, America's Dream. I'm sorry, it has been turned into a film, America's Dream. Esmeralda is described as a founding mother of New York and literature and the title is fitting. Esmeralda herself says when she arrived to the United States she felt invisible and did not see Latin representation in the media describing in an interview that the only Latino on TV at the time was Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy. Times have changed thanks to authors like Esmeralda. That representation has evolved thanks to her voice and thanks to her ability to give Puerto Rico a voice. She's also a champion for young artists everywhere. It's Esmeralda's personal journey into finding out more about her roots that has helped others find and keep their own connection and identity to the island that we all call home. As the Puerto Rican Heritage Society has done for the past 35 years in helping encourage and support the spirit and culture of Puerto Ricans, Esmeralda is a reminder that we must not only experience what it means to be Boricua but we must also be aware of the need to share that experience, our traditions, our faith and our artistry with everyone. Without further ado please help me in welcoming our guest of honor today, Ms. Esmeralda Santiago. In honor of the library, so I decided to lead it to you. I don't have the translation in Spanish, but if you ask in Spanish, I can answer in Spanish. We can have a talk or we can go. This is a thing, this is what happens. Sometimes I don't know what it means to be an artist. I don't know what it means to be an artist, but I can tell. This essay is called How I Learned English, but it was published in the Washington Post several years ago and I hadn't seen it in a while then when I walked in here. But first phrase I learned in English was I'm sorry, so sorry. The only words I could make out in a song that's not popular on the radio. The rest of the ballad was a garble in an email voice quaver. I was 13 and about to learn that love meant having to say, you're sorry, over. I decided to leave Puerto Rico at the United States. As Barbie drove us to the airport, he sang along with Brenda Lee on the radio. What does the song say? I asked. Lo siento. Mami sat next to him, lips tall. She spent two weeks in New York before deciding to move there. Did she understand what Brenda Lee was helping my father say? Mami had chosen to send us away rather than marry her. After we waited goodbye that afternoon, neither Mami nor I, nor my six sisters and brothers, would see him again for eight years, first delight. The streets were labeled, the buildings numbered, neon signs hissed and flashed over storefronts, shadowed letters curved across plain glass windows, open, closed, checks cashed. Messages were sprawled over the mailboxes in the lobby of our apartment building for rent, for sale, keep door closed, for rent, for sale, across the signs of buses, billboards, lund or roofs, while small ones lived to channels over the seats of subway cars. Come to a moral world country, not lean on this door, no animals allowed. And for the occasional seable espagnol, most of the signs were a jumble of advertising, warnings and sometimes necessary information. No standing, no loitering, no entry, who here for emergency break? More mysterious were the graffiti sprayed on walls, scratches and layers of paint on the steel needs holding up the tracks of the elevator training or cars in deep furrows and wooden school desks, I eventually burned fellow curses. The brick building near our school was a public library. The librarian, a rosy-cheeked woman with a platinum beehive, took down the address from the electric and gas billow sent to mommy that proved we lived in the neighborhood. Your name? Esmeralda Santiago. I'm sorry? I spoke slowly, but she didn't understand. She handed me a scrap of paper and I wrote in the looped cursive taught in Puerto Rico's public schools. She printed my name on a card. The 17 letters marched across me increasingly smaller blocks until the final O was a punctuation. Library cards I thought were designed for people with short, American names that dig, date and sound. I handled up and down the aisles, but none of the books was in Spanish. In the children's reading room, a group had gathered at the feet of another librarian who read and turned the books so that the children would see the illustrations. I knelt in the back and listened to the story and saw that the drawings explained the text. This is how you as American children learn English, I thought, by looking at picture books. After the reading, I borrowed as many alphabet books as I was allowed. At home, I studied the drawings and memorized the names of things. Z was for ugly. B for boy. Z for guy. D for dog. B for elephant. I read it to each other. Container, fireman, working in jobs. Z was almost always super, even in the book about fruits, although in the book about jobs, it was for zookeeper. When human books turned to mid-September to risk October, I memorized the words for boot, coat, mittens and snow. When cold November rains drenched my siblings at me on the way to or from school, I remembered sneeze, fever, ambulance, nurse, doctor and hospital. I mentally labeled everything with insight until my hands was full of nouns. Then I graduated from alphabetical chapter goals with an English-to-English dictionary of all signs, reasoning that every time I looked up a word in English, I could learn a few more. By the time I started ninth grade, a year after the arrival of Brooklyn, I was reading at the tenth grade level. I could read, understand and spell the words, but was afraid to speak them. In Spanish, every vowel, every vowel at consonant has one specific sound. In English, the same vowel could have different sounds, the A in vowel or apex. For example, the I in I or in U-ease. Consonants were sometimes silent and sometimes not. I should never say que ni fe for the night, because easy sure is for psychology. During my first three years in New York, my tongue refused to form these filled sounds. I practiced tongue twisters to help develop the necessary muscles. I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought. My literature, this song and confused vowels were a constant embarrassment, but a source of worth to others. To avoid the laughter, I smiled as if I too thought it was funny. Later, I hunched over a notebook, writing out my frustration, shame and rage. I lived in those pages, in English and Spanish, where the written words said what I couldn't utter. Reading gave me language, writing gave me a place to be myself. By the time I returned to Puerto Rico for a visit, I could read the most challenging literature in English and manage modern Americans' lack of use numbers. I had learned an entirely new anglophone way of life, even as my roots remained firmly planted in Spanish. A is for apple, N is for mango. I'm a hybrid, straddling two cultures, two languages, two lives, celebrating the growth that is inherent in all this, but aware too that there have been losses. I'm sorry, so sorry. That first phrase I learned, so full of regret, still lingers. We're meeting between culture, between language, between climate, different ways of being. Even in Puerto Rico, the urban people, the voluntary, there's the people living in campo. I was a hibana from the campo, so already in Puerto Rico, I was already a hybrid anyway, but at least everything else was familiar. Then coming here to the United States, coming to Brooklyn, going from el campo to all of a sudden, instead of walking around, you know, that just leave in and out, curve in and out, and I can tell people where places are, where there's an angle tree or an avocado tree, or the head of all of us, you know. All of a sudden, I'm constantly faced by these tall walls, so that for me, it was like going into a labyrinth, really. When I learned that word, I said, that's exactly what happened to me. And I remember because there were so many of us in my family, mommy, whenever we made a lot of noise, she'd say, hey, no, I don't have that little labyrinth. So for me, the word labyrinth was a lot of noise. So that's what I thought it meant. And then when I went to school and I learned about you know ones and an old story in the mythological stories, I realized, oh, a labyrinth is what I'm in. And in this place, in this city, where all the tall, all these walls are in front of me, and I have to kind of make my way, and the corners are so sharp. When you live in a country, everything's just curvy. There are no straight lines in nature. They're all curvy. I mean, it's an unnatural environment. And I remember actually being at the library and finally being able to read a whole novel of this lovely, lovely librarian whose name I wish I remember because I'm so grateful to her. And she gave me a tree rose in Brooklyn. And I'm like, hey, tree! There wasn't one in our name. It was one to Frankie's name. So there's this between country and city problem that I had that took me much longer to resolve than learning English because I love to read and I knew that I had to do it because I was the eldest and I had to tell my mother and you know, when you have that many children, you are constantly in the emergency room. I can tell you, I know medical in order to help my mom who I found out when she was dying, pardon me, she had a surgery and she woke up with a surgery. Speaking perfect English. I'm not exaggerating. My sisters and I were like, what? She has no English all these years. We have been like running from one place to another always not going to work so that we can take her to the doctor. But she gave me a lot of visitors and she spoke English like crazy. It was amazing. So some weeks later, I had to go and I had a procedure and I said to my doctor, my mother woke up from this anesthesia and she could speak English beautifully. She said, would you please whisper French into my ear so that she actually had picked up so much of it from living here. But she was so afraid and so embarrassed to speak it that she wouldn't do it until whatever happened in her brain and she was able to then, you know, maybe at a time, that was really important, you know. She had to go to the hospital. She was worried because she was not wearing her bra and I had to make up. But it was really interesting to me that she also had to go through this incredible this incredible transition that I was aware of but I didn't appreciate it fully until that moment when I realized I have been so concerned about my transition and my sisters and brothers and all my friends were going through this trans-cultural experience and I hadn't really thought quite as much about the fact that she also went through that and she wasn't too much over them and she had many more responsibilities because she had eventually 11 children so it was even until the very last moment of her life I was getting lessons from her and something that, you know, I'm just so grateful that she was my mom. You know, it would have been easier if she had been a different kind of person but I think it would have been easier for her if I had been a different kind of person because she and I were one. She expected something completely different from her eldest child and I didn't deliver in the way that she expected but I delivered way beyond what she did. So there was this constant, you know, but you know, we are constantly learning about one another and constantly teaching one another about what the possibilities were within this experience. I think she, I'm thinking about her because yesterday was the anniversary of her passing and being in front of people and explaining my process is part of my sharing, really, what she taught me because even though she wasn't specific, you know, when you're a writer, you're very specific, she was not specific. It's so detailed that she, you know, they turned me crazy, you know. But I have a question for her and she said, yes, yes, when I was writing I had a lot of information and they constantly often reminded me of that partly because I had to become a translator for mommy and for my siblings until I would speak enough English and so there's this constant process of educating, really. I'm still a translator in many ways. I'm still translating into English when I'm speaking to you. That's why sometimes I don't know if it's Spanish or English or French. It's with you and you're not even aware of what that process is until you feel like writing or you have to explain to someone or for some reason you are reminded that you're in the middle of a process that doesn't end. It just doesn't end. It doesn't end when I go to Puerto Rico. I have to start over, you know. I speak English 99% of the time and when I get to Puerto Rico I have to, like, it talks to me. It takes me like just a few hours to be able to speak Spanish so I can speak fast and so it's a constant, constant awareness of what's happening. It may not be there for everyone, but because my work is about the process I'm extremely aware of it. Everything I eat is an event for me, you know. Everything that I see, everyone that I meet because it's all part of that process and my constant, I guess it's a necessity now for me to translate it in some way for others. So I think I've had enough. I've told you enough about me and I would love to know if you have any questions or I think you can talk to me. But I'm well aware of the group that we have with Daniel here and with her here and we're all present here, almost all present. But we get together every month and when and we vote for the book that we're going to we have a book that we're going to read and then we get together to present to see what ideas we learned or what we learned. And so anyway I want to thank Daniel for being such a fascinating guide to keep us going and keep us coming, reminding us we're having a book out there, don't forget. And so anyway, to make it short and sweet I wanted to tell you, Miss Santiago, yes, Miranda, please, that you have inspired me. The book that we read which was when I was Puerto Rican there was that first one and almost a woman and those were great and what you're telling us now right now that's amazing to me because I can focus on what you're seeing I can relate it to myself because I had a very interesting life and now I just want to make it short and sweet because of you, because of Daniel and because all of us that are in a Brooklyn that inspired me to write I'm going to write I don't call myself a writer but I'm going to write but you're an inspiration to me and now, right now, that's just beautiful I can relate to what you're saying telling us but I want to write a little memoir of my childhood my parents, my grandmother my aunts and uncles where I was born my education here and these I bought six of these little books my husband significant other a taxi man bought for me I told him I needed something small and he found them this is a blue one I have a green I have four children I was very blessed to have four children and so I wanted four of these but actually five because I'm going to keep one for us so that I can but I want to hand write them some told me well, you can make copies but oh my question well, okay I'm sorry I'm going on I like to chat but I just want to not a question but just to tell you my feelings about your books about your life just amazing and that I'm going to write for my children my upbringing and it's kind of going to be inspirational as it sounds thank you I was born with my husband and I were living in a suburb southern south of Boston and I was sure it was only Puerto Rican and every time I would go just about anywhere grocery, the post office they always asked me where I was from constantly asking about this at first I was like they're not asking me where I'm from they're asking me what are you doing here and really the answer began to change my experience began to change and so when our child was several months old it occurred to me that if I didn't write about my experiences if I didn't say who I was and what I was doing there he would never know how would he know and so my writing really began from that desire to share my life with my children and my husband who didn't know a lot of it he didn't know we knew each other very well and I think we all have this story and you don't all have to be famous published authors like Stephen King or Daniel Steele whatever you have to be the writer for you I really write for that I write for that little 13 year old girl who doesn't find any books about our life you know because I I felt so alone in that experience and so especially those of us who have children who maybe are just so involved here you know devices and with their own lives which they should be doing because that's why we bring them into the world so that they can become the people that they're supposed to be but it's important for them to know their story and so you can write these stories in a lovely book like that I used this big composition the book because they remind me of school for some reason and just don't be embarrassed and don't be ashamed and complain in it you know I write a lot of complaints in my journals because how else am I going to express all the things that are happening to me it's not all about you know flowers and bravos you know some of the things I need to say I can only say to the page and I think it makes it easier in my interpersonal relationship that I've already taken care of that stuff you know in those books but being able to share your life your history with your children is the biggest news you can use though one of the before my parents passed away I recorded that because I realized I didn't know that much about them you know I've lived with them in the same place for years and there's a lot I didn't know so I had to kind of convince them to allow me to to interview them and I learned so much about them things that my other siblings didn't know that they didn't ask so I encourage you to do that with your elders and just value them enough that their story is important because it's going to be important for you so thank you my name is José Repagán I'm from Boricua I'm from Manateño first of all thank you for the opportunity I dare to say that few writers connect to Boricua as you do you have the opportunity to travel a lot talk to Boricua on the island and talk to the Boricua we're here for those who are here Puerto Rico is not we're not in Puerto Rico but Puerto Rico is in us I have a lot of curiosity to hear from you there's a difference between the topics of Boricua that are still on the island with the Boricua we're here and although I know this isn't a press conference I know the difference if there's any news regarding your professional projects recently your work was carried out by Teatro en Puerto Rico there's a book in the panorama that somehow evokes the figure of Jíbaro if there's any installation or something new on the way three weeks ago a function of when Boricua was born they wrote the script I don't know I wasn't part of the process because for me that was the art of them they're writers or actors musicians and musicians they have the permission but I don't want to see them I've never seen them but it was an exciting experience for me and my family I didn't do anything with them and as soon as the lights turned on my sister started crying and all of a sudden and it was because for the first time we came to our parents as young people with a little child and that experience it was like seeing them in the body it was such a thing they don't look like anyone's parents they were actors but they don't look like my friends my parents but it was so shocking for me the words that my parents said to us that was a wonderful experience but I don't know where they are and the third question is about how do people in Puerto Rico what do they do what do they do what we are here we have this nostalgia that is what I see many Puerto Rican people being here in Puerto Rico or those who just arrived that desire to be on the island never goes away those who are in Puerto Rico before the hurricane before the storm before the storm the opinions of the Puerto Rican who had never been on the island close to us who were outside that's what we heard wherever I was they would say to me to my friends but after the hurricane when we from here and we didn't let the storm to be forgotten we went to things to send we sent money we brought families here to be here taking care of them while things were going a little better for them we did that for them and that didn't happen to them until this disaster didn't happen to them we were good people too when the word New York written remember that was not an argument it was not and now it's a different Puerto Rican now it's different and I think in the island because the last time I went I understood and I said I was such a snob but I said I was proud I didn't try because nobody came out very well but now I understand and so that that disaster changed the devil I think and that's what I'm saying I'm not glad that the conversation has changed and the attitude has changed I remember my mother I remember the Puerto Rican in the island that we always lived the ones we were born and the ones we were born in so what happens Sonia is self-proclaimed she's in Puerto Rico all of a sudden she didn't she's in Puerto Rico but now now she's self-proclaimed so the thing changes depending on how it changes so the more good things you do as a Puerto Rican here the more Puerto Rican you become over there comment and I have a question you're talking about switching English, Spanish and back and forth and you don't miss a beat at one point in time I'm a native San Antonio Mexican American culture but relate a lot to your story as well a lot of customs a lot of things like that but there are later studies that say actually that's a third way and a higher level of speaking because you can switch whereas in other languages that may not be that possible but here we were demeaned and it's like well you really don't know Spanish and you really don't know English but now I understand that actually it's another skill so that's just my comment my question is that I think in our book club we had a difference of opinion relating to your story and your history of abuse by your mother mostly but I had a difference of opinion in that I thought your father was more abusive in the sense that he didn't marry your mother and yet sent him to New York and instantly he marries and then there were things like disappearances I don't know whatever it was and how do you answer that question because I had a question about that he was abusive also whether it was abuse of the different kind the kind abuse I don't know what you would call it he beat my brother up because if the first boy there were three girls there was a boy and he was so much harder on my young brother so that he's still traumatized I mean he said he's 16 now he's traumatized by it's the fact that that my father who you would meet him he'd go he'd go he'd be happy, he'd be happy he would never think that he would be a violent person but his expectations on my brothers were so much higher than the expectations of his daughters so mommy had the opposite issue and also I think regarding their their issues around that is that my mother was really 17 when I was born she was a young woman and all of a sudden she has three kids seven she had seven children she was 29 years old so she she didn't have the resources to understand really had her raised children she had been an only daughter with an alcoholic mother so she didn't come from a situation where she understood anything but what she saw and so that's what she passed on to us and I didn't really understand a lot of that until I wrote my books and had to look at my parents not as my parents but as people adults and people were struggling they were really poor they were undereducated they were frustrated with one another my father was no ego of it my mother was like I can't even begin I don't even have an image of who she was I'm very emotional I'm very passionate and those two students they broke up together basically and I didn't figure it out until I started writing but I began to understand that they were so different but they loved each other to the very end they loved each other so I have forgiven a lot of that I've forgiven it all really well I feel like they did what they could with what they had and what they knew and as they get older and more mature and they learn more and they see what was going on my younger siblings had a very different experience with my mom and so we always talk about there's 11 of us and whenever we would get together I'm two generations away from my youngest sibling and so they had a completely different she had a completely different way of dealing with them because I was the eldest everything I did was a challenge to her and I feel like oh I'm sorry when I returned to Puerto Rico I had been to Puerto Rico when I was 13 and my sister Edna was around 17 and then I had always been very close because all the other siblings she was the most artistic like me our personalities were very much in sync so I go to see my mom and Edna is like dressed like the minis and everything so they were like and she's going out I didn't and that's good for them couple of times I wanted to yeah so we have time for a couple more questions just one question you choose it Esmeralda you choose it my mom gave me almost a woman and when I was Puerto Rican and I was still living in the island so I left the island when I was 24 and I felt very seen because the internet was just coming into play and like this global culture so I felt like in between two cultures and when I was in grad school I read the Turkish Lover and you talk about El Geri'dan so that's something that we all know from our mom so you know always felt between two cultures and I wonder if you feel that way that you're still between two cultures that's around the world and like I had to I remember when I had to go to India right you would think people here you work about what are you doing but I'm really studying the cultural norm so that I wouldn't do something stupid like eating with my left hand those kinds of little details some things that I really looked because I'm aware that different cultures different societies have different cultures and so I study it before I go to those places so that I can actually feel comfortable myself within a new environment but also so that they are not uncomfortable with me by making you know having to point out something dumb but if they feel like they can in some cultures they will do it in some places they won't but you can see you can see it so I feel that what I'm living in this United States American life and Puerto Rican life is the same you know the biggest portion but when I'm outside of the continental United States or outside of our island of Puerto Rico there's a different person there because I'm very aware of what else is around me and I think that this experience if you accept it and value it then it makes it better because all of a sudden you know you know what you're going through you know what they're going through what the host culture is going through and so it makes it easier for you to be a traveler and so I I've not traveled a lot my mother still was very close to me and she said I do feel now that I belong in the world not just here or there I really belong in the schools in first and I try to be respectful of other cultures as much as I can if I know what the issues are it's a gift you know after this trauma de llevarme de Puerto Rico a Brooklyn to this labyrinth it has been a gift for me ultimately in my entire life because my life has a completely different trajectory than it would have had si no quedamos en la Google por ejemplo and a very different trajectory when I realized that I'm in Brooklyn I'm not going to stay here at the minute I decided I was not going to stay there because I did not like it there I had to make a choice of what do I do to make sure that I don't stay here and so that was the beginning of me becoming the person that I was until then I was just going along whatever was happening I was a child but at that moment I said no no, I am not which is there I have to make some decisions and I have to stick to them and I have to respect my decision making and I'm not going to let other people change that and that's what changed in my life so that has actually expanded my entire life in the horizons that I now see and no longer see just the walls I actually see the horizons behind those walls please again help me thank you Esmeralda for such a wonderful presentation Esmeralda, I'm sure your words have been a great inspiration throughout the years for many people in this room and that has shown in all the people that have spoken to you today so again we thank you for being here thank you for accepting our invitation the books have arrived for those of you who are interested in some of her books and Esmeralda in a few minutes she's going to be outside signing some books, she's going to take it quick break but she'll be outside signing books as well I want to thank again the San Antonio Public Library for allowing us to be here to the director Ramiro Salazar and Hayley Holmes you want to say something? I promise Frank I would Esmeralda's books are available in both English and Spanish an abridged on Audible and her website esmeralda.santiago.com as well to follow her Thank you thank you to the volunteers thank you for being here enjoy your weekend