55 pages • 1 hour read
Esmeralda SantiagoAlmost a Woman
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-19
Chapter 16 Summary: “Your face is no longer innocent.”
Esmeralda and her family prepare for her upcoming wedding to Jurgen, putting down non-refundable deposits. In their daily phone conversations, Jurgen reassures Esmeralda that he will give up his life of crime so they can move to Egypt, where he will be a pilot for an Arab prince. Esmeralda thinks it’s a strange coincidence that she played Cleopatra for so many years in high school, and now she’ll be moving to Egypt. As the date for Jurgen’s return draws nearer, Esmeralda worries that she doesn’t love him enough, and that she’ll be trapped in a foreign country with someone she barely knows. Two days before Jurgen returns, Esmeralda breaks things off with him. At first, she is embarrassed, but then she realizes she had to follow her instinct: “I saved myself, I thought. I’ve done something most women don’t do until it’s too late” (265).
Shoshana returns from Israel, and she and Esmeralda talk about their various love affairs. While looking for work one day in Manhattan, Esmeralda meets Ulvi Dogan, a Turkish filmmaker who says he wants to cast her in a movie. Esmeralda takes Shoshana to the audition, which turns out to be in Ulvi’s apartment. Ulvi seems irritated that Shoshana is there but promises to give them both parts, and he asks Esmeralda to return on a different day for a screen test. Shoshana and Esmeralda look up Ulvi and learn he truly is a director who won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival. When Esmeralda returns to the apartment, Ulvi tells her the film crew is late. The two talk, bonding over the difficulty of assimilating into a new culture and retaining the old: “We agreed that the longing to go back to the home country, even after years of being away, never disappeared” (271). Esmeralda and Ulvi make love, staying together for several hours. When Esmeralda returns home that night, she worries people on the train will see the “telltale signs” (273).
Esmeralda can’t fully explain her attraction to Ulvi, nor why she chose to lose her virginity to him over her other boyfriends. At home, Esmeralda avoids Mami so she won’t see a change in her daughter. Esmeralda begins to perform again with her old troop. She and Ulvi continue to see each other, though Esmeralda experiences some strange disconnects from him, like how he doesn’t want to hear about her life away from him, and how he thinks Shoshana is a loose girl for having sex, even though he and Esmeralda are having sex: “It is not the same. She is cheap girl” (276). Esmeralda returns home late one night and is relieved to find Mami sleeping. The next morning, Esmeralda can tell Mami knows something, but Mami doesn’t confront her, and Esmeralda continues to keep up her lies: “I was grateful for her silent censure, for another day in which she didn’t confront me with her suspicions” (278).
Chapter 17 Summary: “Where were you last night?”
Shoshana begins having an affair with her former professor, and she and Esmeralda discuss dating older men. Esmeralda wonders what her father looks like, because she hasn’t seen him in seven years. Esmeralda knows her relationship with Ulvi won’t end in marriage but continues to enjoy their time together, except she grows increasingly paranoid about why he won’t tell her about his life away from her and suspects he may be doing something illegal. One day when he is out of the apartment, Esmeralda carefully looks through everything because Ulvi is very fastidious and will notice if anything is out of place, but she doesn’t find anything.
Esmeralda dreams of living on her own, but Mami won’t let her move out until she’s married. Esmeralda and Shoshana spend as much time away from home as possible, including accepting dates from strangers—only dinner, never drinking, and no fooling around, so they can remain faithful to their boyfriends. Esmeralda begins rehearsals for a new children’s theater production, where her new costar, a Puerto Rican actor named Jaime, challenges her for not being involved enough in championing Puerto Rican rights and cultural heritage. Esmeralda believes she has enough on her plate: “I felt no obligation to ‘our people’ in the abstract, felt, in fact, weighed down by duty to my people in the concrete: Mami, Tata, my ten sisters and brothers” (286).
Esmeralda invites Ulvi to one of her performances and is pleased when he makes amorous love to her afterward. After being let go from her part-time advertising job for not being a student any longer, Esmeralda must quit the acting troop to pursue full-time work, which she struggles to find. Esmeralda eventually takes an office job at a factory, which makes Mami lament, “All this education so that you can work in a factory?” (291). Esmeralda’s boss, Iris, tries to get Esmeralda interested in women’s garments, but Esmeralda doesn’t have the aptitude for it. One of Esmeralda’s former costars is in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and invites her to watch him perform, so she breaks off a date with Ulvi. Esmeralda meets the cast of the play, including a young Bette Midler. Ulvi calls Esmeralda at work and asks her to come over for dinner. During dinner, Ulvi quizzes Esmeralda about why she broke her date with him and asks if she has many “men friends” (293). When Esmeralda answers that she does, Ulvi shouts at her to leave. A heartbroken Esmeralda goes home in tears and tells Mami she has a stomachache as she cries through the night.
Chapter 18 Summary: “For that slave-girl look...”
At work, Iris notices that Esmeralda is distressed and knows immediately, “A man did this” (296). Esmeralda takes some time off work, resisting the urge to go back to Ulvi’s apartment. Shoshana does her best to cheer Esmeralda up, but breaks some bad news: Shoshana will be returning to Israel to complete her military service, at a time when Esmeralda will miss her friend the most. Shoshana is the only one Esmeralda feels truly knows her, and who will do silly, adventurous things, like spontaneously attend a film screening and giggle the whole way through the overly serious film. Back at work, Esmeralda sees she has several messages from Ulvi, but she refuses to call him back. Ulvi gets a hold of Esmeralda on the phone and wants to meet with her to explain why he was so angry. Esmeralda insists on meeting in a public space.
Over dinner, Ulvi and Esmeralda realize they didn’t fully understand each other. Esmeralda reassures him she’s never had sex with anyone else, and they return to his apartment to make love: “Afterwards, as I lay content in his arms, he said he wanted me always by his side” (299). Ulvi’s and Esmeralda’s relationship deepens as he begins to involve her more in his life, telling her more about his experience with his award-winning film, Dry Summer, which is now being re-edited to be released in America, including some new music and sex scenes. Esmeralda’s life becomes consumed by Ulvi, and she begins to let him make decisions for her, like that she shouldn’t do Indian dance anymore: “‘Is ridiculous dance,’ was Ulvi’s opinion. ‘Not for you’” (301).
Esmeralda spends so much time away from home that Mami no longer asks where she is, and even when Ulvi is gone, Esmeralda finds she can’t bear being home for very long. Ulvi gets new producers and takes Esmeralda out to a nice dinner to celebrate, giving her a thick gold bracelet as a present. Iris thinks it looks like a shackle. More expensive gifts follow as Ulvi begins to mold Esmeralda into what he wants her to be: the way she dresses, the way she talks, the way she eats, the way she moves. Esmeralda learns that he is 37, 17 years her senior, and the same age as Mami. Recognizing that Ulvi has stepped in as a missing father figure, Esmeralda welcomes his control: “He needed a disciple; I needed to be led” (306). Esmeralda finds her old identities disappearing as she becomes consumed in what Ulvi wants her to be.
Chapter 19 Summary: “It is the way it must be.”
Esmeralda and Ulvi take long walks through Central Park, where Esmeralda can’t help but remember some of her other boyfriends and love interests, like Shanti the photographer, Jurgen, and the men who would take Shoshana and Esmeralda to dinner. Esmeralda doesn’t tell Ulvi about any of this history because he doesn’t ever ask about her: “The less interest he had in my life, the more ashamed of it I became, ashamed of a life before him, without him” (307). One day on one of the paths in the park, Ulvi collapses. Esmeralda encourages him to go to the hospital. A few days later, Ulvi tells Esmeralda he needs an operation for his hernia. Esmeralda worries that Ulvi will die like Mami’s lover, Francisco, who had stomach cancer, but Ulvi reassures her he will be fine. Ulvi will be moving to Florida in a few weeks after he has finished his movie, and he doesn’t know if he will ever come back to New York.
Esmeralda has long anticipated that their relationship would end, so she is surprised when Ulvi asks her to come with him. Esmeralda says her mother won’t allow it, so Ulvi tells Esmeralda to leave Mami. Esmeralda is torn, knowing how much she loves Mami and how much she owes her. She realizes Ulvi is testing her loyalty, to see who Esmeralda loves more—Ulvi, or Mami: “Without saying the words, Ulvi was asking me to give her up, too, to choose between them” (310). Ulvi tells her to think about it, so Esmeralda goes home in a daze. At the apartment, Mami is happy to see her, and offers her food. Esmeralda listens to the sounds of her family in the small apartment. In her room, she lies in bed, realizing “that I had already made my choice” (311).
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
In Chapter 16, Esmeralda experiences the physical act of love when she loses her virginity. Throughout her life, Esmeralda has been given contradictory messages about sex and love, and Esmeralda has often held her suitors at a distance, afraid of being perceived as a loose woman. For reasons she can’t quite explain to herself, Esmeralda feels drawn to Ulvi, though making love with him doesn’t resolve any of her questions about love and sexuality: “Did I love Ulvi? I must have to give myself so willingly to him [...] About him the best I could say was, ‘I make love with him’” (275). Esmeralda worries that this means she is the kind of loose woman that Mami has always warned her against being, especially because Esmeralda has harbored romantic fantasies for so many years.
Those fantasies have been a reflection of Esmeralda wanting a very different life from her mother; though Mami tells Esmeralda she should wait to have sex until she’s married and marry a secure, stable man who can provide for her, Mami has never been married and has 11 children out of wedlock, and the family barely has enough money to get by. Though men have come into Esmeralda’s life who offer her money and financial security, like Avery Lee, and marriage and respectability, like Jurgen, Esmeralda instead finds herself drawn to the kind of man Mami has always warned her against: A man who offers no promises and no stability. Though consciously, Esmeralda wants to escape her mother’s fate, she finds it difficult to escape the path that Mami has set for herself, because Esmeralda has no other example of successful romantic love to follow.
During Esmeralda’s time working and going to school in New York, she has encountered a variety of people from many backgrounds. Esmeralda’s artistic life has been shaped around adopting pieces from other cultures, such as her love of Indian dance and her frequent portrayal of Cleopatra in high school. Her boyfriends have had a variety of backgrounds, including German, Turkish, and Texan. Yet in Chapter 17, Esmeralda’s encounters with some of her friends and coworkers remind her that many people remain culturally insulated by choice. Shoshana dates men from different backgrounds but tells Esmeralda she could never marry someone who wasn’t Jewish, arguing, “I have to think of the future of Israel” (280).
Esmeralda’s Puerto Rican costar, Jaime, gives Esmeralda a hard time for not being more involved in promoting Puerto Rican heritage, telling her, “We need to champion our art and theater” (286). Esmeralda appreciates her Puerto Rican roots but feels that Puerto Ricans in America are put under more pressure to promote their culture; if she still lived on the island, she wouldn’t have to fight so hard to “prove” she was Puerto Rican: “Were ballet dancers on the island less Puerto Rican because their art originated in France? What about pianists who performed Beethoven?” (286). Yet again, Esmeralda finds herself torn between two worlds, not quite American enough, not quite Puerto Rican enough, and uncertain of what that makes her.
As Esmeralda’s relationship with Ulvi deepens in Chapter 18, she discovers another reason for her attraction to him: Ulvi begins to fill the role of a father figure, which has been missing for seven years in her life since leaving Puerto Rico:
He took care of me in a way no one else did. In his arms I felt safe and protected. Wrapped in his embrace, I had no responsibilities except to do as he said. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me, ‘I take care of everything.’ He was clear about what he expected from me. Unlike the other adults in my life, he didn’t say one thing and do another (306).
Ulvi takes Esmeralda completely under his wing, molding her into what he wants her to become: “He wanted to be Pygmalion, and I became the stone upon which he sculpted Galatea” (305). Esmeralda learns how to behave like an “‘elegant girl,’ who dressed well and behaved appropriately according to a complicated system of etiquette and demeanor” rather than a “cheap girl,” Ulvi’s “biggest insult” (304). This includes many aspects of her life, such as how she walks, talks, dresses, the artistic endeavors she pursues, and who she spends her time with. Esmeralda recognizes that in becoming consumed by Ulvi, she loses touch with her family and friends, but in many ways, this is a relief to Esmeralda, so used to being one of many children, and now the only focus of someone’s time and attention. Esmeralda also embraces losing herself into what Ulvi wants her to be, because her conflicting identities have always been a source of confusion and anxiety to her. Though Esmeralda hints that this level of control will be unhealthy, as someone losing herself to love for the first time, Esmeralda welcomes the all-consuming nature of Ulvi’s attention.
Though the Prologue indicates that Esmeralda chose to go to Florida, Chapter 19 leaves this decision open-ended. Both options—leaving with Ulvi or staying with Mami and her family—present a real dilemma for Esmeralda. Ulvi represents romantic love, and with him, Esmeralda will achieve her dream of escaping Brooklyn. At the same time, Ulvi is controlling, trying to erase Esmeralda’s life outside of him, and she will have to leave everything she knows to be with him. Mami represents familial love, and Esmeralda knows just how much her life is intertwined with Mami’s, and how much Mami needs her, in a way Ulvi will never understand: “He’d never placed his head on her lap, had never listened as she revealed her dreams for her children” (309). However, living at home has become increasingly unbearable for Esmeralda the older she gets, with the constant noise, conflict, and anxiety of family life. Esmeralda does choose to follow Ulvi, but this conflict at the end of the memoir suggests it may not be a permanent decision, because Esmeralda will always find her way back to Mami.
