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.