Family Installments: Memories of Growing Up Hispanic

The author, a Puerto Rican immigrant who teaches English in New York evokes the squalid conditions of his family's life on a hill farm in Puerto Rico and the difficult period of adjustment in the years after their arrival to an East Harlem barrio. Rivera hedges on the question of whether his account is autobiographical or fiction by giving the family a fictional name, Malanguez, but offering a subtitle, "Memories of Growing Up Hispanic," and cover photos of his family.