Krystle Masuku Character Analysis

Krystle is Thandi and Dingani Masuku’s daughter and Marcus’s sister. Krystle begins life as a spoiled, rule-following child who has internalized the sexism and racism of the adults around her. When her parents decide to adopt Genie, Krystle hates the idea because she fears that Genie will be prettier than she is—until she sees realizes Genie is darker-skinned than her, which she thinks makes Genie “inferior.” She ropes Genie and Marcus into extended games of tea, where she pretends to be a former ballerina who has given up her career for marriage and children; this aspiration reveals how her mother Thandi and grandmother Eunice’s focus on her appearance, as well as her elite school’s focus on marriageability, has narrowed her ambitions. When Krystle is about 10, Genie is hit by a car when crossing the street to fetch her—and when Krystle is 13, she learns that Genie has HIV, hears that HIV can be transmitted by blood transfusion, and assumes Genie was infected by a transfusion after the car accident. Krystle blames herself for Genie’s HIV and thinks her family also blames her, interpreting their refusal to admit this is a sign of their untrustworthiness. She goes to the U.S. for college and eventually enters a PhD program, where she has trouble writing a dissertation about whether national identity in her unnamed country (implied to be Zimbabwe) is based on exclusion—a topic that indicates both the violent struggles in Zimbabwe’s colonial and postcolonial history and Krystle’s growing realization that her family defined itself by condescending to and partially excluding Genie. When Krystle returns home after learning Genie is in a coma, she internally confronts the selfish way her family loved Genie. She then runs into Xander Dangerfield, an attractive man she recently met in the U.S. while trying to save a wounded baby bird—indicating possible new avenues in her life.