On Beauty revolves around the Belseys, a racially diverse family in which the father (Howard) is a white man from England, the mother (Kiki) is a Black woman from Florida, and the children (Jerome, Zora, and Levi) are all biracial, with each choosing to emphasize different aspects of their identity. In particular, the novel focuses on how many of these characters choose to either accept or subvert stereotypes about what it means to be Black. On one end of the spectrum is Levi, who tries to connect to his Black identity by distancing himself from his family and adopting ideas of Blackness from pop culture by wearing streetwear, listening to hip-hop, and adopting a Brooklyn accent. When Levi meets some Haitian street hawkers, he feels that they are living the most “authentic” version of Blackness he has ever experienced and wants to emulate them. But his perspective on stereotypes changes when one of the street hawkers, Chouchou, totally confounds Levi’s expectations. Chouchou, Levi learns, was a teacher of French literature when he lived in Haiti, and his monosyllabic street hawker persona is just a guise to make tourists feel comfortable. Learning the truth about Chouchou causes Levi to rethink his ideas about authentic identity.
At the other end of the spectrum is Monty, a Black conservative professor who makes a conscious effort to subvert stereotypes about Blackness that he considers harmful. Monty believes that other Black people have a victim mentality and that people like him and his family have been able to succeed because they have superior morals and work ethic. But Monty’s actions fail to match his ideals, and he also must reconsider his ideas about identity when news about his affair with Chantelle comes to light, causing him to lose the moral superiority at the core of his life philosophy. On Beauty thus shows how racial identity can be multifaceted, and while stereotypes can influence a person’s behavior by setting expectations about identity to follow or subvert, they never capture the full range of a person’s life experiences.
Race and Identity ThemeTracker
Race and Identity Quotes in On Beauty
‘It’s about trying,’ said Michael keenly – the topic seemed to animate him. ‘It’s like, if you put the effort in. And I spose my mum’s always been at home, which makes a lot of difference, I think. Having the mother figure and all that. Nurturing. It’s like a Caribbean ideal – a lot of people lose sight of it.’
And this is another thing they do. They flirt with you violently because there is no possibility of it being taken seriously.
The young man stepped forward cautiously, with one hand up as if to show he meant no harm. He turned the Discman over in her hand and showed her the sticky patch. He lifted his hoodie and the T-shirt beneath it to reveal a well-defined pelvic bone and drew a second Discman from his waistband. ‘This one’s yours.’
‘They’re exactly the same.’
‘Tell them to calm themselves. It’s only hip-hop. It won’t kill them.’
Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in their loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn’t, she did what girls generally do when they don’t feel the part: she dressed it instead.
‘She’s fabulous,’ replied Kiki, only now taking the time to look at her properly. In the centre of the frame there was a tall, naked black woman wearing only a red bandanna and standing in a fantastical white space, surrounded all about by tropical branches and kaleidoscopic fruit and flowers. Four pink birds, one green parrot. Three humming birds. Many brown butterflies. It was painted in a primitive, childlike style, everything flat on the canvas. No perspective, no depth.
‘I don’t think that’s how things go down now,’ Levi said at last, gently, not wanting to disappoint his father, but needing to catch the bus. It was a nice enough story, but it was making him late for work.
‘It’s true that men – they respond to beauty . . . it doesn’t end for them, this . . . this concern with beauty as a physical actuality in the world – and that’s clearly imprisoning and it infantilizes . . . but it’s true and . . . I don’t know how else to explain what –’
‘Are you interested in refining what you have?’
‘What’s your deal, man? Don’t take this strange, but . . . you don’t seem like the type of guy who would be doing this kind of thing. You know?’
‘How about this?’ said Choo quietly, again alarming Levi with his easy use of American idioms, albeit dipped in that exotic accent. ‘You leave me alone and I do my very best to leave you alone. You sell your movies. I sell these handbags. How would that be?’
‘She found a black fella, I spose. It was always going to happen, though. It’s in their nature.’
Choo had been on his conscience. Because . . . because Choo wasn’t like the other guys in the team. He didn’t travel with the pack, didn’t screw around or go dancing, and he seemed, by contrast, lonely, isolated. Basically, Levi figured that Choo was just plain smarter than all the people around him, and Levi, who lived with people similarly cursed, felt that his own experience in this area (as a carer of smart folk) made him especially qualified to help Choo out.
Howard looked back at the woman on the wall, Rembrandt’s love, Hendrickje. Though her hands were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on paint and roiled with the brush, the rest of her skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety – chalky whites and lively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come.