Literary device admiration from when I was Puerto Rican

 When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

Esmeralda Santiago does an excellent job of using descriptive language in her book that gives me an amazing, vivid view of what exactly was happening in the book. It appears to me that any scene that Esmeralda remembers well she gives incredible descriptions of, mostly little moments like a Christmas dinner or her mother teaching her how to iron. Here are some great quotes to show this.

"They split ripe coconuts open, broke the thick white meat into chunks that we children grated when we weren't too busy munching."         page 161

"The steam rose from the shirt and filled my head with the clean fresh scent of sun-dried cotton, and bubbles of perspiration flushed along my hair line and dripped down my neck."      page 160

"The sun floated over the mountains, stained the blue sky red-orange, and flattened the lagoon until it looked like a mirror for the stars."     page 142


I might be able to use this in my writing in a similar way to how Esmeralda used it in her writing, by converting anything I can remember well, no matter how small,  into beautiful and vivid descriptions. obviously easier said than done. This will make any piece of writing an absolute joy to read and  it makes the reader have to slow down and think about what they are reading to really soak in all the details. I personally had to read over many of these details two or three times to really appreciate the descriptive language.