Characters
- Emma Lou Morgan: a young African-American woman. Growing up in Boise, Idaho, she encounters discrimination by lighter-skinned blacks among her family and community. She takes after her father in appearance, who abandoned her and her lighter-skinned mother.
- Uncle Joe: Emma Lou is closer to him than others in her mother's family; she follows his advice to go to Los Angeles for college.
- Hazel Mason: The first black student whom Emma Lou meets at USC. Judging her to be the "wrong" kind of Negro, Emma tries to limit their association.
- Alva: one of Emma Lou’s love interests in Harlem. He is a lighter-skinned man who manipulates women to use their money to get by. Married twice already, he has become alcoholic.
- Braxton: Alva’s roommate. He does not approve of Alva's seeing Emma Lou because of her skin color.
- Geraldine: one of Alva’s companions; she bears his son, who is born disfigured. She abandons them both.
- John: Emma Lou’s first love interest in Harlem.
- Arline Strange: an actress. Emma Lou works as her maid, helping with make-up and costumes.
- Gwedolyn Johnson: Emma Lou’s friend from the Y.W.C.A. She eventually marries Benson Brown, whom Emma Lou had dated.
- Benson Brown: a man Emma Lou meets after she moves to the Y.W.C.A. He is lighter-skinned and promising, the "right" sort of African-American man.
Read more about this topic: The Blacker The Berry
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)