Santiago is a professional journalist, and her journalistic expertise is evident in Almost a Woman. Although she includes melodic dialogue, vivid descriptive passages, and evocative literary imagery, her style primarily resembles the straightforward writing typical of newspapers and magazines. She tells her story in almost purely chronological order, offering each event in her life as an installment in a news story, interpreting and commenting on those events infrequently.

Although her style is largely journalistic, the author incorporates occasional thematic imagery into her writing. For example, she compares her lovemaking with Ulvi to dancing: "Our lovemaking was a dance, each part of our bodies attuned to its complement in the other, as if we were not two but one." Similarly, she equates the room where she works in Fisher Scientific to a stage: "It was an enormous stage lit on all sides, with an audience that could...