Race
Most of Evaristo's characters in Girl, Woman, Other identify as black, but each treats his/her/their blackness slightly differently. Factors like how strongly a character identifies as black, whether he/she/they are an immigrant, age, and personal politics all contribute to how each person in the novel relates to her/his/their race. For example, Roland is a black man, but for him, his blackness is merely accessory (rather than central) to his achievements. On the other hand, Amma's blackness is central to her work, politics, beliefs, and identity. These varying personal politics affect how each character views race.
Regardless of how each character them/him/herself views race, race is also an external factor that affects how society at large treats the characters. How society treats race (and people of a particular race), however, is also a complex topic affected by factors like place and time. For example, the American South in the forties, alluded to in Chapter Four, treated black people like Slim differently than how Yazz is treated at university today.
Marriage
Girl, Woman, Other details a series of marriages, both happy and unhappy. However, common to each relationship is conflict and personal flaws. For example, even in Grace's happy relationship to Joseph, and Hattie's loving relationship with Slim, conflicts and disagreements arise that reveal the various flaws and idiosyncrasies of each character. The difference between a happy and an unhappy marriage is in whether these disagreements can be overcome together. Each couple has its own ways of resolving conflict, but those that fail to straighten out disagreements end up unhappy, divorced, or both. Penelope comes to mind as a character who has experienced multiple unhappy marriages. With both her first and second husbands, unreconciled conflicts and differences lead to unhappy separations.
Marriage has long been a conventional or traditional symbol of "sealing" a romantic relationship, but characters in this novel also ratify romantic relationships in other ways.
Nontraditional Relationships
Nontraditional romantic relationships also abound in Evaristo's novel. Some examples include the non-heterosexual relationships that various characters have (Amma, Dominique, Bummi, Morgan, Roland), open relationships (in the case of Roland and Kenny), polyamory (Amma), and relationships with large age gaps (Winsome & Lennox). In some of these cases, the law and social conventions prevent or scorn the ratification of these relationships through marriage, and the characters look for other ways to be partnered romantically. Ultimately, the relationship structure that works for each character is highly individual—what works for the monogamous Dominique, for example, certainly won't work for the polyamorous Amma.
Womanhood and Identity
The theme of identity crisis is reinforced in the case of Megan. She falls prey to drugs because of identity problems and tries to find the answers on internet. Shirley mentors a single student each year and she begins it with Carole. Penelope dissents Shirley for her racist sensitive attitude towards education. Penelope does not like her because she put her sole focus on black children. Penelope realizes at the end of the novel that she had a black mother and a white father. She renounces her prejudice against black people at the end and embraces her black mother.
Activism
Some characters—Carole and Roland come to mind—are decidedly not activists. Others—Amma, Dominique, Yazz, and Morgan—decidedly are. Others lie somewhere on a spectrum—Penelope and Shirley, for example, enter the teaching profession with hopes to help low-income students and children of color. These optimistic and idealistic views are certainly directed toward positive social change, but aren't what we would traditionally consider activism. The more overt forms of activism—protest, discourse, and today, social media posting—are the realm of Amma, Dominique, Yazz, and Morgan. In fact, all four are considered "radically liberal" activists by some. Even so, however, these four characters have different views on what should and shouldn't be allowed. Dominique, for example, does not want to allow trans people into her women-only film festival. Amma, Yazz, and Morgan strongly disagree with her.
Gentrification
Gentrification, the process in which wealthier residents move into a poorer urban area and displace the original inhabitants, is most heavily discussed in the first chapter. Amma bemoans that her neighborhood, Brixton, has become gentrified, that the "dingy" pubs that "old-timers" like Amma and her friends used to frequent have been replaced by trendy bars and gastro-pubs. Amma seems to equate gentrification with the replacement of older, more "authentic" businesses with newer, more commercialized ones. Yazz, however, has a different take on the issue. When Amma complains about the gentrification of Brixton, Yazz in turn calls her mother out for having purchased a house in Brixton. According to Yazz, Amma ostensibly contributed to the original gentrification of Brixton: having not herself been born in the neighborhood, Amma purchased a house using money gained from an inheritance, and thus contributed to the process of pushing out the original Brixton residents. This mother-daughter discourse on gentrification reveals that what is "gentrifying" is ultimately relative: who are the truly "original" residents? Who has a claim to being there first, and to being the more "authentic" presence? For Amma, the older, dingier pubs are original and authentic. For the residents who were there before Amma, perhaps even those dingy pubs were newer, hipper, and gentrifying.
Intergenerational Conflict
Each chapter contains a tale of mothers and daughters. Inevitably, it appears, there is also conflict and difference between mothers and daughters. In the case of Yazz and Amma, Yazz is a strong-minded adolescent who thinks that her mother's generation has "RUINED EVERYTHING," and is irresponsible and hypocritical. Our next duo, Carole and Bummi, also encounters significant conflict: Bummi's Nigerian-informed worldview clashes with Carole's, and the two fight about everything from who Carole will marry (Bummi disapproves of Carole marrying a white rather than Nigerian man), what she eats, and how she speaks. LaTisha has struggles with her mother to contend with, as well as conflicts with her three children. The list goes on. What seems common to every single character are generational misunderstandings that lead to conflicts between children and parents.
