Gerard Starling Character Analysis

Gerard is George and Inez’s son. To his parents’ disappointment, he lets the vices he finds in Harlem get the better of him: he starts doing drugs and stealing as a teenager, and then he moves to Miami to become a full-time drug dealer. Eventually, his addiction ruins his health. After he visits his dying father, who’s in a coma after a nasty fall, Gerard becomes so distraught that he stops going to his own medical appointments and dies within a matter of days. His fate, like his sister Sonya’s, demonstrates how the poverty and violence in Northern Black neighborhoods often undermined migrants’ hopes that their children would have better opportunities and lives than they did.