Abeng

Clare Savage is the central character of the novel. She is a 12-year-old girl from a mixed-race family. She lives with her parents and younger sister in Kingston during the school year and visits with her maternal grandmother during the summer. She is close with her white father who likes to talk to her about history and human civilization. Her mother, Kitty, is emotionally distant but also shares her own cultural heritage in the form of exploring the Jamaican bush and talking about various plants and their uses.

At the beginning of the story, it becomes clear that Clare is experiencing confusion about her identity and place in society because of the unspoken rules of segregation that govern Jamaican society. Her desire to understand the world heightens after she reads Anne Frank’s diary. Clare’s attempts to understand the Holocaust and, indirectly, Jamaica, by talking to her teachers and her father are unsuccessful. What her mentors tell her contradicts her own experiences as a bi-racial girl, since she is light-skinned and Black peers treat her like a white person. The duality of Clare’s position is evident through her code-switching. At school or surrounded by white people, Clare speaks “proper” English. While living with her grandmother in the country, she speaks patois.