Andrea “Dre” Johnson Character Analysis

Dre is Yahaira’s next-door neighbor, as well as her girlfriend. They’ve been dating since seventh grade. Dre is a Black girl from the South, though she’s lived in New York since she was about seven. She loves nothing more than gardening and growing things; she keeps a container garden on her and the Rios’s fire escape and also has a plot in the community garden. Yahaira loves and appreciates Dre and Dre’s family for their love and unwavering support, but she also resents Dre because Dre always seems to know what the right thing is—and she always does what she believes is the right thing. An environmentalist, Dre wants Yahaira to feel the same way she does about, for instance, the evils of plastic straws, and she doesn’t always understand that Yahaira sees the world in shades of gray more than she does. Dre’s loving and generous nature comes to the forefront at the end of the novel, when she reveals a pot of herbs she planted to help Camino feel more at home when she comes to New York.