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.
Themes
Conflicting Identities
Esmeralda expresses frustration at being torn between many different worlds. Esmeralda comes from Puerto Rico but spends her adolescent years in Brooklyn and her young adulthood working and going to school in Manhattan. Each place comes with its own set of expectations and cultural norms to which Esmeralda must learn to adapt. Esmeralda feels rooted to Puerto Rico, but her older family members consider her to be Americanized because she has spent so much time in the United States; conversely, many white Americans categorize Esmeralda as strictly Puerto Rican, even though so much of her life has been spent in New York.
Esmeralda constantly feels this pull between being not quite one thing and not quite the other, heightened by another conflicting identity she faces: Esmeralda is not quite a woman, but also not a little girl any longer. Struggling to adapt to having the body of a woman but the naivete of a child, Esmeralda finds herself treated as both extremes depending on the situation. This difficulty is where the title of the memoir stems from: Almost a Woman. The “almost” is key, because Esmeralda is not quite a woman yet and occupies that confusing middle space in between. One moment that exemplifies Esmeralda’s conflicting identities occurs at her graduation from high school. Esmeralda performs as the Virgin Mary and her family comes to watch. Afterward, Esmeralda realizes the discomfort of having her two worlds collide: her family and her classmates. She writes:
As we hugged, kissed cheeks, and applauded ourselves, my family backed away. The distance was not much, a few feet at most, but it was a continent. I felt their pull from where they bunched in a corner of the room, talking and laughing, isolated in the noisy crowd of voluble actors and jovial teachers. I couldn’t walk away from them, but neither did I want to be with them and miss the camaraderie of actors after a show. I was pulled by Mami, Don Carlos, and my siblings in one direction, while my peers and teachers towed me in another. Immobile, I stood halfway between both, unable to choose, hoping the party wouldn’t move one inch away from me and that my family would stay solidly where they were. In the end, I stood alone between both (144).
The fact that Esmeralda has attended a performing arts school separates her from her family members, many of whom never went to high school. Esmeralda’s mostly white, English-speaking, American classmates provide a stark contrast to her Puerto Rican, Spanish-speaking relatives who feel awkward and out of place at this social gathering. Esmeralda can traverse between the two worlds, but she wants to belong to both, not be forced to choose sides. In this moment, she is not quite American, not quite Puerto Rican, not one of her classmates but not part of her family, and yet she is also all these things at the same time. This confusion creates a constant tension that Esmeralda must battle against to understand who she is.
Mothers and Daughters
The memoir explores the strange, complex bond between mothers and daughters. Though many mother/daughter relationships are highlighted—including Mami and Tata, Shoshana and her mother, and Alma and her mother—the central relationship in the text is between Esmeralda and Mami. Esmeralda and Mami have a fiercely close relationship, full of love but also sometimes resentment. As Mami’s first child, Esmeralda and Mami share a special bond, even though Mami eventually goes on to have 10 other children.
Mami relies on Esmeralda in many ways, such as asking Esmeralda to translate for her in the welfare office, and she sometimes seems to treat Esmeralda as another adult in the household. At other times, Mami reminds Esmeralda that she is her child, such as when she refuses to let Esmeralda move out of the apartment before she gets married. For her part, Esmeralda also has complex feelings toward Mami. Esmeralda recognizes Mami as her rock, her inspiration, and the person she always knows will love her the most in the entire world. However, Esmeralda also desperately wants a different life from her mother.
During her film shoot for Up the Down Staircase, some of Esmeralda’s castmates ask her about how many siblings she has and jokingly ask if Mami has ever heard of birth control. Mami refuses to take the pill, calling it “nothing more than a license for young women to have sex without getting married” (156). Yet Esmeralda knows that Mami has sex without getting married, though Esmeralda is called “disrespectful” for pointing this out. Overall, Esmeralda agrees with Mami’s choice, because she loves all her siblings and enjoys having a big family. Yet when it comes to her own reproductive health, Esmeralda wants to take a different path: “I’d decided that I’d changed enough diapers for a lifetime and planned to sign up for the pill as soon as there was any possibility I’d need it” (156). This example shows some of the complexity of Mami’s and Esmeralda’s relationship. Esmeralda loves Mami and feels defensive of her choices when others question them, even though Esmeralda has often questioned them. Esmeralda supports Mami’s lifestyle but unequivocally does not want her life to go down the same path, and she will do whatever it takes to not end up like Mami.
As Esmeralda becomes older, her relationship with Mami takes a backseat with some of her other friendships and romances, but Mami continues to be a guiding presence at the back of Esmeralda’s mind. When Ulvi, Esmeralda’s lover, asks her to move with him to Florida, Esmeralda worries about Mami’s disapproval as though she is still a young girl. Ulvi tells Esmeralda she must grow up and leave Mami, but Esmeralda knows the choice isn’t that simple:
There was no way to explain to Ulvi, who didn’t know Mami, why the thought of leaving my mother so that I could go to Ford Lauderdale with my lover terrified me. [...] He hadn’t heard the pain in her voice when she mourned her unfinished education, young, unmarried motherhood, men who betrayed her. He hadn’t been with her at the welfare office, had not stood solemn and scared as she humbled herself before people who would never conquer her pride because they couldn’t vanquish her spirit. He’d never placed his head on her lap, had never listened as she revealed her dreams for her children, who would, she hoped, be smarter about life than she had been. He hadn’t seen Mami’s face light up at the thought of me, her eldest daughter, dressed in a white wedding gown en route to a cathedral (309).
Esmeralda knows that men will come and go in her life, but Mami will always be her constant, unchanging source of love. Though their relationship will change as Esmeralda grows older, and though Esmeralda may at times resent Mami’s interference, Esmeralda reflects that nothing can sever the bond between them.
Rootlessness
Esmeralda expresses a sense of rootlessness, never quite knowing where she belongs. Part of this is due to never having a permanent home. In the Prologue, Esmeralda writes that she moves 20 times during the 21 years she spent living with her mother. In doing so, Esmeralda learns to not put too much attachment on things like places or objects: “We learned not to attach value to possessions because they were as temporary as the walls that held us for a few months” (1). As a younger girl, Esmeralda feels that home is wherever her family is, though this, too, begins to change as she grows older. Wanting privacy and independence, Esmeralda comes to resent the crowded family life she lives; though she still loves her family, Esmeralda begins to feel like a stranger in her own home, where she often hides in her room with the cover pulled over her head “to block out the noise, the confusion, the drama of my family’s life” (301). No longer at home with her family, Esmeralda doesn’t know where she belongs.
Similarly, Esmeralda feels a sense of rootlessness within America. Esmeralda is defined as being Puerto Rican, and she dreams of her home country, but she also finds it increasingly difficult to remember what her life was like there. Esmeralda’s time in New York—her education, her working life, her friendships and romantic experiences—have all Americanized her, to the point where she worries she has forgotten how be to Puerto Rican. She and Ulvi bond over this, because Ulvi is Turkish and experiences a similar disconnect:
We lamented how hard it was to retain one’s first language when there were few opportunities to practice. We agreed that the longing to go back to the home country, even after years of being away, never disappeared (271).
Esmeralda notes that even after speaking English for seven years, she continues to translate from Spanish in her head. However, she also knows that having become accustomed to living an Americanized lifestyle, it would be difficult to return to Puerto Rico and live as she once did. Because of this, Esmeralda worries she does not belong in either place, and she wonders then where—if anywhere—she truly belongs.
