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:
“A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.”
—Clifford Irving (b. 1930)
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has “never had a chance, poor devil,” you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)