the descendant of free mulattos and the grand-
daughter of Boise’s Blue Vein society, a group that
is open only to people who are light-skinned
enough to pass and to show the blue veins in their
wrists. Following graduation, she travels further
west to Los Angeles, where her kindly Uncle Joe
hopes that she will be able to avoid “stupid color
prejudice such as she had encountered among the
blue vein circle in her home town.” She enrolls at
the University of California, Los Angeles, and has
the opportunity, and burden at times, of negotiat-
ing new relationships with the few students of
color on campus.
Despite her optimism and readiness to thrive,
Emma Lou suffers the sting of intraracial exclusion
and her uneven experiences in California prompt
her to leave school and head to HARLEM. There
she experiences more direct racism as she searches
for gainful employment and suffers the taunts of
men who stand on the sidewalk appraising the girls
and women who pass by. The “Harlem” section
closes after Emma Lou endures a long lecture from
a well-meaning employment agency clerk about
the values of higher education and hears a crude
man named Fats suggest to his buddies that he
would never pursue a girl like her because he
“don’t haul no coal.” Emma Lou surrenders her
goal of doing administrative white-collar work and
accepts a job as a maid to Arline Strange, a white
actress who, at the time that Emma Lou joins her,
is playing the part of a mulatto heroine. When she
takes a temporary leave from the job because Ar-
line is called away due to a family emergency,
Emma Lou begins a series of destructive behaviors.
She spends hours fussing with her hair and then
resorts to trying a number of remedies designed to
lighten the skin. She makes herself sick by eating
arsenic wafers that “were guaranteed to increase
the pallor of one’s skin” and jeopardizes her clear
complexion by slathering on the peroxide-based
“Black and White” ointment that produces only
“blackheads, irritating rashes, and a burning skin.”
She endures a difficult relationship with a man
named Alva, whose penchant for drink and wild
parties jeopardizes Emma Lou’s reputation and re-
sults in her losing her rental accommodations.
Thanks to Arline Strange’s intervention, Emma
Lou obtains a job as a maid to Clere Sloan, a re-
tired actress who is married to Campbell Kitchen,
a writer “who had become interested in Harlem”
and “along with Carl Van Vechten was one of the
leading spirits in this ‘Explore Harlem; Know the
Negro’” crusade. It is clear that Emma Lou can
find no sanctuary in New York City, despite its
large and diverse African-American community,
the opportunities to teach, and myriad prospects
for entertainment. She finally extricates herself
from the unhealthy relationship that she resumes
with Alva and his sickly child and prepares to live
up to her new motto: “Find—not seek.”
Thurman suggests that even while victim-
ized because of her skin tone, Emma Lou has im-
bibed the same cultural biases and prejudices
used against her. Thurman uses Emma’s desire
for a satisfying romance to explore the alienation
and self-doubt that she experiences time and
time again. He suggests that Emma is in fact vic-
timized by the society that jeers her in the
streets, makes disparaging remarks about her
marriageability, and focuses on a flawed racial
aesthetic rather than individual merits and po-
tential. The character of Truman Walter, a figure
whose Christian name and fictional circum-
stances bear a striking resemblance to the au-
thor’s identity, offers sharp critiques of the social
and cultural desires that fuel intraracial intoler-
ance. Ultimately, Emma survives several demean-
ing social encounters and disappointing encounters
with men, including a tortured relationship with
a mixed-race Filipino named Alva, and contem-
plates the best way to restore her own agency
and self-confidence. The novel closes as she con-
siders the value of returning to her childhood
home, a place that both defines and challenges
the notion that racial solidarity is either pre-
dictable or available.
The novel begins with two epigraphs that un-
derscore the competing interpretations of race in
general, and dark skin tone in particular. The first
one that Thurman uses is taken from an African-
American folk saying that proposes that “[t]he
blacker the berry / The sweeter the juice.” The sec-
ond, excerpted from a COUNTEE CULLENpoem,
states hauntingly, “My color shrouds me in.” Writer
Shirley Taylor Haizlip suggests that the novel is “an
important story for our times and for the future.
One that should be kept alive, told, and retold, in
the context of how black self-hate, black rage is40 Blacker the Berry, The