George Johnson
This book is a personal memoir of childhood of George Matthew Johnson. Johnson is a self-described non-binary queer Black American. Johnson is a writer who has been published in a number of high profile periodicals. This book is a follow-up to All Boys aren’t Blue, published a year earlier, which is memoir focusing on the later youth of the author during a period of sexual discovery.
Nanny
Aside from the author, the dominant figure in the book is Louise Kennedy Evans. She is the author’s grandmother, but is affectionately referred to by the nickname “Nanny.” Nanny is the grand matriarch of a large clan given to pearls of wisdom Johnson labels Nannyisms. An iconic real-life representative of a figure which has unfortunately all too often devolved into stereotype, Nanny is the proverbial glue that holds the family together as well as the straw that stirs the drink. Her presence in the lives of the young black kids around which the memoir revolves is an essential strength.
Garrett
Garrett is the author’s younger brother. He is three years young and must suffer the slings of arrows of being the baby who “stole the attention” George was enjoying as all his own before Garrett’s arrival. Making the situation even more unbearable is that Garrett managed to pull of the trick of remaining the “baby” of the family even in the face of cousins born after him. Despite the rivalry for attention, the two remain close and together develop especially close bonds with two of their cousins.
Rall
Occasionally referred to as Lil’ Rall as a way to distinguish between an family member sharing the same name—as often happens in large extended families—Rall was welcome into Nanny’s fold before George and Garrett. As a result, he is not just equipped with five years more experience than the author, but also remains persistently taller than George. This is a situation which serves to delineate the nature of the relationship between the cousins: Rall is the protective older brother despite actually being a cousin.
Rasul
Rasul completes the little gang of four who bond under the guiding light of Nanny. He is a year younger than Rall which still gives him a four-year advantage over George. The author admits to being bewildered himself at times that Rall and Rasul were themselves brothers since they did share the same similar pigmentation that makes it easy to identify George and Garrett as siblings. Through a series of domestic events of the type which is also very common within large families, the two sets of brothers all come to literally live under Nanny’s watchful eye, sharing the Big Yellow House in Plainfield that the four young boys came to see as a palace. Such close proximity at the same time inevitably yields the sort of adventures for which the literary form of the memoir was created.
