The Darkest Child

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-13

Chapters 14-23

Chapters 24-35

Chapters 36-48

Chapters 49-62

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Effects of Systemic Racism and Colorism on Individual and Family Dynamics

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of physical and sexual abuse, child sex trafficking, lynching, infanticide, and segregation. The source material includes racial slurs and ableist and anti-gay language, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes.

Given the setting of 1950s and early 1960s small-town Georgia, systemic racism and colorism deeply influence the plot and character development in The Darkest Child. The Quinn children and their friends struggle against the predominant racism and segregation in the town and community, as well as colorism within their own family. Racism and colorism affect every aspect of life, including socioeconomic status, careers, romantic relationships, friendships, crime and legal matters, and parenthood. Racism, segregation, and colorism are so pervasive that, at first, Tangy reflects that, “I didn’t know about the rest of the country, but I knew that nothing was going to change in Triacy County” (20). However, she and her siblings ultimately exert resilience and resist these structures in a variety of ways.

The Quinn family and their friends are systematically disadvantaged due to their race, but they still find ways to resist. For example, Black residents, especially women, are prevented from having high-paying jobs and are frequently lied to about the pay for jobs they do have access to. Rozelle resists this through her sex work, where she earns money from the same white men who might otherwise refuse to employ her. Additionally, Rozelle witnesses Chadlow lynch Junior, then Sam is wrongly accused of Junior’s murder and held in jail while Chadlow freely abuses Tangy both sexually and physically. When Sam is released from jail, he resists the racist structures that caused him to be wrongly accused by burning Chadlow’s cafe, and later, Crow kills Chadlow, ending his racist, tyrannical reign over the local Black community. The local school board refuses to comply with the federal mandate to integrate public schools, but Tangy resists this by becoming the best student at her school and graduating as valedictorian despite the odds stacked against her. Although systemic racism puts the Quinns and their friends at obvious disadvantages, they resist these structures to exert their autonomy, resilience, and strength, contributing to the slow process of eroding systemic racism in the community.

In addition to fighting racism and segregation in the larger community, the Quinn children must also fight insidious colorism within their own family. As a light-skinned Black woman, Rozelle shows a clear preference for her lighter-skinned children, especially the boys, Sam and Harvey. Although she abuses all her children, she abuses the darker-skinned ones—Tangy, Edna, and Judy—in unique ways due to their skin color. When Judy is born, Rozelle says, “It’s a darkie, Mushy, darker than Edna, as dark as Tangy […] It broke something inside me they can’t fix […] Took everything out, said I couldn’t have no mo’, and all I got was a darkie” (72). Rozelle refers to Judy with racist language and as “it” rather than “her,” dehumanizing her own child due to colorism. Rozelle has such disdain for Judy that she murders her, breaking the promise she made to always look after her children and give them a home. She also breaks this promise to Edna, dumping her on Frank and Pearl even though she swore never to kick her kids out of her house; this further demonstrates Rozelle’s disdain for her darker-skinned children. In Tangy’s case, Rozelle repeatedly tells her that no man will ever want to marry her, illustrating how Rozelle has internalized toxic, colorist cultural norms and beauty standards. Although colorism runs rampant, the characters resist this form of structural inequality as well. For instance, Crow, who is also dark-skinned, calls Tangy a “queen,” which appears to improve her self-confidence and help her slowly overcome the internalized colorism that the community bred in her.

The Complexities of Mother-Daughter Relationships Within Troubled Families

Rozelle is undeniably abusive, committing heinous acts toward her children, especially her daughters, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, infanticide, and forcing them into child sex work. Nonetheless, most of her children do not simply hate her, nor does she simply hate her children. Instead, the novel suggests that mother-daughter relationships are unbelievably complicated and accompanied by extreme, often contradictory emotions. Even before being sold into child sex work, Tangy reflects, “I loved her with all my heart, but if she did not die by Monday morning, I was determined to discover from the pages of my schoolbooks how to break the chains that bound me to my mother” (6). Despite the love she feels, Tangy’s mission throughout the text is to escape her mother, who is ultimately toxic even though she does offer some moments of comfort and joy within the hellish home she’s created.

Rozelle’s troubled relationship with her daughters seems to stem in part from her troubled relationship with her mother, Zadie; considering Rozelle’s past emphasizes her humanity as a person who is more than just a mother and cannot realistically be expected to single-handedly meet all her 10 children’s needs. Since Rozelle was born as a product of rape, Zadie struggled to bond with her, and as an adult, Rozelle still seems to fear Zadie more than she fears anything else. As Pearl points out,

She was thirteen, and her mama had done threw her out the house. Rosie […] just didn’t know how to do it right. How could she know when she ain’t never had nobody to teach her nothing? […] All y’all got a daddy that ain’t never done nothing for you, and y’all walking ‘round here blaming Rosie that’s done the best she knew how (363-64).

Placing solitary blame on Rozelle for all her family’s hardships is a misogynistic tendency, and internalized misogyny plays into the complexity of mother-daughter relationships. Whereas Rozelle’s daughters blame Rozelle for her failures while appearing to excuse their fathers of any sins, Rozelle is harder on her daughters than she is on her sons, advocating for a man’s “right” to physically abuse his wife, selling her daughters into sex work, shaming Tarabelle with anti-gay slurs, and shaming Mushy for having an affair with a married man even though she has done the same thing multiple times. Although Rozelle’s relationships with her sons are complicated as well, misogyny and gender roles further complicate her relationships with her daughters.

Even though Rozelle is not solely responsible for the suffering of her daughters, she is undeniably abusive, and her daughters struggle to reconcile this abuse with the moments when Rozelle is tender, loving, and kind. Tangy reflects, “Sometimes I believed she did not mean to hurt us, but could not help herself. She was, after all, the same gentle woman who had once, long ago, taught us to love […] I truly believed there was something unnatural about her” (122). For a while, it seems that Tangy’s love for her mother keeps her tied to the house despite the extent of Rozelle’s abuse, but ultimately, Tangy finds the confusing mixture of love and hatred to be even more unbearable and confusing than pure hatred would be. Just as Rozelle weeps for Mushy, who “she truly loved—and hated” (109), Tangy mourns the relationship she could have had with her mother while acknowledging that the only way to ensure safety for herself and Laura is to leave.

The Role of Education in Achieving Liberation

The Darkest Child suggests that education is a powerful tool that can be used to gain liberation from personal problems as well as structural inequalities. From the beginning of the novel, Tangy is aware that education is the mechanism through which she’ll find freedom from her mother’s abusive tyranny: “I was determined to discover from the pages of my schoolbooks how to break the chains that bound me to my mother” (6). Additionally, Junior, Hambone, and Sam make convincing arguments for how education can further the movement for social justice. The novel suggests that, at times, differences in education levels or educational philosophies can alienate people from their families or others in the community, but ultimately, education is still the most effective tool available for both personal liberation and positive social change.

Hambone argues that ignorance is the enemy of progress, and, similarly, Junior argues that education is a necessary condition for progress; their speeches both illustrate the centrality of education in social justice movements. Hambone says, “As long as you remain ignorant, they’ll treat you any way they want” (226), suggesting that the first step toward social change is recognizing the change that needs to occur. Junior asks, “What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred and ignorance?” and asserts, “I believe in education as a weapon in our fight. […] I want to help people learn to read and write. I know knives and guns are not the answer. Once we get a fight like that started, who will have the power to stop it?” (62). Whereas violence is a destructive strategy that will beget more violence, education has the potential to reveal productive solutions.

Tangy is torn throughout most of the novel because she desperately wants to complete high school and attend college, but others in her family and community view these desires as selfish and lazy; nonetheless, Tangy knows that education can be her ticket out of a life of sex work or domestic servitude, neither of which she wants to do. Rozelle also seems to know this, because she worries that teachers and principals are trying to take Tangy away from her with promises of education. Junior tells Tangy, “I know you’re hungry—so hungry that you will die of starvation if you stay in Bakersfield. […] You devour knowledge like a buzzard on a corpse […] You need more, and you’ll never find it here” (134). When Tangy imagines her future, she envisions herself as a domestic servant for the same white family she already works for, still living in Rozelle’s house. Mr. Pace tells her that college is her ticket out of this life that seems predestined, and Tangy believes him. Although the novel doesn’t specify whether Tangy ultimately attends college, she does graduate high school as the valedictorian, and shortly afterward, she leaves town with Laura, presumably saving them both from being forced into sex work. The novel suggests that Tangy’s education gave her the reasoning skills to make the best decision for herself and the only sister she’s still able to protect.