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Daisy
Slim is Hattie’s husband and Ada Mae and Sonny’s father. Slim is an African American man from Georgia. When Slim and Hattie marry, he’s happy to leave the United States behind for good, finding that people respect him more in England. Slim comes from a family of sharecroppers, so he is excited that marrying Hattie means he’ll finally be a landowner after his ancestors were denied their forty acres and a mule. When Slim is outraged after he and Hattie discover that Captain Linnaeus Rydendale, Hattie’s ancestor who founded Greenfields, was a slave runner, Hattie calms him down by suggesting that his co-ownership is a form of reparations that he and his family deserve. When Ada Mae and Sonny come home crying after their white classmates bully them, Slim has little sympathy. Instead, he tells them horror stories from his youth living in a segregated America, where his brother was lynched. This highlights a generational divide between Slim and his children. The horrors that Slim witnessed in his childhood leave him politically aware and with a strong sense of Black pride that his children don’t inherit. Instead, they are ashamed to be seen with him, revealing how white supremacy destroys family relationships and cultural pride and identity. Slim eventually dies of cancer, leaving Hattie heartbroken for the rest of her life.
Slim Jackson Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
The Girl, Woman, Other quotes below are all either spoken by Slim Jackson or refer to Slim Jackson . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4: Hattie
Quotes
Hattie asked him to tone it down with the stories, it was scaring their children and would make them hate themselves, he said they needed to toughen up and what did she know about it with her being high-yaller and living in the back of beyond?
you liked that I’m high-yaller, as you put it, so don’t you go using it against me, Slim
he said the Negro had reason to be angry, having spent four hundred years in American enslaved, victimized and kept downtrodden
it was a powder keg waiting to explode
she replied they were a million miles from America and it’s different here, Slim, not perfect but better
he said his little brother Sonny was the children’s uncle and they needed to know what happened to him and about the history of a country that allowed him to be murdered, and it’s our duty to face up to racial issues, Hattie, because our children are darker than you and aren’t going to have it as easy
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Explanation and Analysis:
they both followed the news about the civil rights protests, Slim said the Negro needed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
when they were assassinated within three years of each other
he disappeared into the hills for a few days
Ada Mae married Tommy, the first man who asked, grateful anyone would
she didn’t exactly have suitors lining up in Newcastle wanting to proudly introduce their black girlfriend to their parents in the nineteen-sixties
Tommy was on the ugly side, a face like a garden gnome, her and Slim joked, none too bright, either
Hattie suspected the lad didn’t have too many choices himself
a coalminer from young, he was apprenticed as a welder when the mines were shut down
he proved to be a good husband and really did love Ada Mae, in spite of her colour
as he told Hattie and Slim when he came to ask for her hand
lucky that Slim didn’t lay him out
there and then
Sonny’s experience was somewhat different, according to Ada Mae who reported back that women queued up round the block for him
they thought he was the next best thing to dating Johnny Mathis
he married Janet, a barmaid, whose parents objected
and told her to choose
after Joseph died, Slim broke open an old library cabinet when he couldn’t find the keys, said that as the man of the house he needed to know what was in it
he found old ledgers that recorded the captain’s lucrative business as a slave runner, exchanging slaves from Africa for sugar in the West Indies
came charging like a lunatic into the kitchen where she was cooking and had a go at her for keeping such a wicked family secret from him
she didn’t know, she told him, was as upset as he was, the cabinet had been locked her entire life, her father told her important documents were inside and never go near it
she calmed Slim down, they talked it through
it’s not me or my Pa who’s personally responsible, Slim, she said, trying to mollify her husband, no you co-own the spoils with me
she wrapped her long arms around his waist from behind
it’s come full circle, hasn’t it?
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Slim Jackson Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
The Girl, Woman, Other quotes below are all either spoken by Slim Jackson or refer to Slim Jackson . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4: Hattie
Quotes
Hattie asked him to tone it down with the stories, it was scaring their children and would make them hate themselves, he said they needed to toughen up and what did she know about it with her being high-yaller and living in the back of beyond?
you liked that I’m high-yaller, as you put it, so don’t you go using it against me, Slim
he said the Negro had reason to be angry, having spent four hundred years in American enslaved, victimized and kept downtrodden
it was a powder keg waiting to explode
she replied they were a million miles from America and it’s different here, Slim, not perfect but better
he said his little brother Sonny was the children’s uncle and they needed to know what happened to him and about the history of a country that allowed him to be murdered, and it’s our duty to face up to racial issues, Hattie, because our children are darker than you and aren’t going to have it as easy
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
they both followed the news about the civil rights protests, Slim said the Negro needed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
when they were assassinated within three years of each other
he disappeared into the hills for a few days
Ada Mae married Tommy, the first man who asked, grateful anyone would
she didn’t exactly have suitors lining up in Newcastle wanting to proudly introduce their black girlfriend to their parents in the nineteen-sixties
Tommy was on the ugly side, a face like a garden gnome, her and Slim joked, none too bright, either
Hattie suspected the lad didn’t have too many choices himself
a coalminer from young, he was apprenticed as a welder when the mines were shut down
he proved to be a good husband and really did love Ada Mae, in spite of her colour
as he told Hattie and Slim when he came to ask for her hand
lucky that Slim didn’t lay him out
there and then
Sonny’s experience was somewhat different, according to Ada Mae who reported back that women queued up round the block for him
they thought he was the next best thing to dating Johnny Mathis
he married Janet, a barmaid, whose parents objected
and told her to choose
after Joseph died, Slim broke open an old library cabinet when he couldn’t find the keys, said that as the man of the house he needed to know what was in it
he found old ledgers that recorded the captain’s lucrative business as a slave runner, exchanging slaves from Africa for sugar in the West Indies
came charging like a lunatic into the kitchen where she was cooking and had a go at her for keeping such a wicked family secret from him
she didn’t know, she told him, was as upset as he was, the cabinet had been locked her entire life, her father told her important documents were inside and never go near it
she calmed Slim down, they talked it through
it’s not me or my Pa who’s personally responsible, Slim, she said, trying to mollify her husband, no you co-own the spoils with me
she wrapped her long arms around his waist from behind
it’s come full circle, hasn’t it?
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
