Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of racism.

“‘I don’t understand about you young people anyway,’ the Captain went on. You’ve been to school and you don’t know nothing, you got a little bit of money and you ain’t got nothing, got your whole life in front of you and you ain’t going to nothing.

‘What I do comes from not being able to do nothing better. What you do is ‘cause you don’t want to do better.’”

These are the comments of the Captain, a well-known Harlem numbers boss, in response to teasing from Gloria. He makes the case that those like him who have resorted to unlawful means to survive did so because they did not have educational and economic opportunities that the Harlem teenagers have in 1979. His words initiate the novel’s plot, as Gloria interprets them as a challenge and sets out, with the help of her friends, to prove him wrong.

“When I found out I was the oldest, I just about cried. I was fifteen and everybody else was fifteen, except for Jeannie, but I had been born in March and everybody else had either been born in the summer or the fall. That was a low blow. So I gave him my name and address, although I knew I didn’t want to. But as soon as everybody else found out that I was the oldest, they jumped right on my case.”

Paul is only months older than the others, but this arbitrary distinction forces him into a position of leadership for which he feels unprepared. Though he is the narrator, Paul has lingered in the background of the story up to this point, his name unidentified until a lawyer asks, “Who’s Paul Williams” in Chapter 2 (28). This allows the author to follow the emergence of Paul over the course of the narrative as the true proprietor of The Joint and the leader of the Action Group.

“Later, when I had finally escaped to my room, I figured out two things that annoyed me about my father. The first was that he was just plain annoying, and the second was that he wasn’t annoying in a way that you could really jump on. If he hit me or drank a lot I could really get on that. But when he got on my case about picking up garbage, it was hard. I guess it’s easier to take a person being a pain in the neck when they’re wrong than it is them being a pain in the neck when they’re right.”

Paul, portrayed as a typical teenager, has a conflicted relationship with his father, who often criticizes him for what he perceives as irresponsible behavior. This criticism has created an emotional distance between the two, and learning to understand and appreciate his father is an important part of Paul’s coming-of-age story.