Another Brooklyn

Sylvia is the center of August’s friend group. She is beautiful, with a wide mouth, straight teeth, full lips, and reddish-brown hair. Even as a girl, she has a “deep, graveled” voice and speaks with a French patois. An immigrant from Martinique, she is the youngest of four sisters and has intellectual parents who expect their daughters to succeed and pursue careers as lawyers. She is brilliant and self-confident, and her friends long to be physically close to her, even to be her. Despite her strict upbringing, she is the first of her friends to lose her virginity. She encourages August to have sex with Jerome, but when Jerome dumps August, she begins to date him herself. She becomes pregnant. When she runs into August on the subway, she has aged well.

Angela is beautiful, light-skinned, and a talented dancer. As a girl, Angela is clearly ashamed of her background and refuses to tell her friends who her parents are, although she states that her mother “was” a dancer. There is a repressed rage evident in her movements: in the middle of dancing, her eyes flash and her fists clench. As a teenager, she tells August that she will someday leave Brooklyn. When her mother dies of an overdose on the roof of a housing project, her friends finally learn that they had seen her in their neighborhood many times before. Angela goes missing, and her friends do not know where to find her, as she had lied about her place of residence. Years later, August sees her on television in a movie about dancer.

Gigi is beautiful and dark-skinned, with thick hair and “eyes like a Chinese girl” (57). As a girl, Gigi moved from South Carolina to Brooklyn with her mother, who had gotten pregnant as a teenager. Her mother encourages her to embrace her beauty and pursue a career as an actress, although warning her that she will have to keep her skin from growing any darker. Gigi is confused by the ambivalent messaging around her beauty and takes solace in her friendships. At 12, a homeless veteran assaults her. She only tells her friends. When she is admitted to a performing arts high school in Manhattan, she seems to be the first one of her friends “to fly.” These words take on a different significance after her drama club performance. Singing in Jesus Christ, Superstar, Gigi’s voice cracks, and that night, she kills herself. 

August’s father is a native Brooklynite. He joined the military at 18 and met his wife while stationed in Clarksville. After his wife’s death, he moves his children from Tennessee back to Bushwick, where he seeks to care for them the best he can, taking them to Coney Island and shielding them from the reality of their poverty. In Brooklyn, he takes a string of lovers before joining the Nation of Islam. He is romantically involved with Sister Loretta for some time, although eventually, he begins to date non-Muslim women again. He is frustrated by his daughter’s inability to acknowledge her mother’s death, and after angrily confronting her, introduces her to Sister Sonja for counseling. He dies of liver cancer in Brooklyn.

August’s younger brother is smooth-skinned with a thick brow. He trusts his sister implicitly and believes her when she says their mother will join them in Brooklyn. As a boy, he breaks through the family apartment’s window and badly cuts his hand. He becomes a math whiz, and his newfound understanding of the absolute leads him to acknowledge his mother’s death long before August is able to. As an adult, he wears wire-rimmed glasses and looks “like a figure out of history” (11). He lives in Astoria, Queens, and is a devout Muslim. At the outset of the novel, he is expecting his first child with his wife, Alafia.

August’s mother is not present for the events of the novel, but she is alive in August’s memory. Her family owned the land in SweetGrove, Tennessee, and she knew how to farm it. She had graceful hands that she was not afraid of getting dirty. She was “sad-eyed and long-limbed” (44). After her younger brother, Clyde, was killed in the Vietnam War, she began to hear his voice. She disbelieved reports of his death, and her behavior became increasingly erratic. Eventually, she drowned herself.

Jennie is a “dark, reedy” (47) woman from the Dominican Republic. When she moves into August’s building, August and her brother are heartened. However, their father warns them to stay way, and it is implied that she is a sex worker. Her children come to live with her, but she neglects them, leaving them with August while she does heroin. They are taken away, and she moves out.

Sister Loretta arrives in August’s family’s apartment and begins to transform their lives. She wears a hijab, goes makeup less, and is “hungry and beautiful” (89). She encourages the family to live a clean life, eliminating “slave foods” from their diets, cleaning their apartment, and attending prayer. August and her brother grow attached to her, calling her “Sister Mama Loretta.” Eventually, her relationship with August’s father ends. For the rest of their lives, August’s brother adopts the Islamic customs Sister Loretta imparted, whereas August does not.

August’s first boyfriend is four years older than her. He begins courting her when she is still a young girl, winking at her. He first kisses her when she is 12. The two sexually experiment, and he pressures her to have sex. When she refuses, he tells her, “forget you,” and begins a relationship with Sylvia, whom he impregnates.

August’s uncle Clyde was a graduate of Howard University. He was 23 when he was drafted to Vietnam. He died in combat. His death continued to haunt his sister well after his passing.