Esmeralda Santiago’s When I was Puerto Rican is an autobiography in which she describes her life in Puerto Rico and her move to the United States together with her mother and younger sisters and brothers. The book is written in English, but it is also sprinkled with many Spanish words which show different realities that surround Negi, the girl narrator. Some of these words can be marked as culturemes that are specific for the Puerto Rican culture. The author also includes a glossary of terms translated from Spanish into English at the end of the book. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the use of culturemes according to Molina’s (2001) classification of culturemes in the field of translation studies. Moreover, the translation techniques used by the author in the glossary will be identified according to Molina and Hurtado Albir’s (2002) proposal of an integrated model for the analysis of the translation of culturemes. Moving and adapting to the United States is a very complicated process in which maintaining and reconfiguring the Puerto Rican cultural identity in a territory shared with other ethnic groups is a key issue.