51 pages • 1 hour read
Crystal Smith PaulDid You Hear About Kitty Karr?
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Kitty Karr Tate (Mary Magdalene Ledbetter)
Content Warning: This section includes discussions of racism, police brutality, rape, and sexual assault.
Kitty, one of the book’s two protagonists, embodies its central themes. Kitty’s journey from North Carolina to LA illustrates the impact of Race and US Structural Racism throughout the US in the 20th century. Racial discrimination was enshrined in the law in the Jim Crow South that Kitty grew up in, but she discovers that even without legal segregation, US structural racism still shapes society in California. Kitty realizes this shortly after her arrival, as Emma tells her, “It’s not the law, but they don’t hide their feelings. The pools, beaches—except for the sliver in Santa Monica—Negroes aren’t welcome” (160). White Hollywood elites like Nathan Tate and Henry Polk pride themselves on being better than their more overtly racist Southern counterparts, but Kitty discovers that Black people in California encounter racism in many similar forms. The ultimate testament to Kitty’s experiences with structural racism is the fact that she lives her entire adult life as a white woman. The decision to pass causes Kitty pain but also brings her relief: “Within her grief was a degree of relief. […] being Negro was akin to being a jack-in-the-box. Sometimes the lid opened, and you were able to shine, but eventually, you ended up back inside the darkness of limitation until someone got the notion to open the box again” (131). To have a successful career as a screen actress, Kitty has to pass as white. Black actresses are not offered the same opportunities white actresses receive, regardless of their talent or ability. Kitty gives up her own daughter to maintain her white image, which again drives home the fact that Kitty’s livelihood—and perhaps her life—depend on her whiteness.
Kitty demonstrates the challenges of being not only Black in America but also a Black woman, raising the book’s theme of The Implications of Intersectionality. The added implications of passing as white for women are seen in the rules Emma lays out for Kitty: “Never get pregnant. Traits skip generations—who knows what the baby will come out looking like. […] Marry well. Money is the best protection” (133-35). As women, Kitty and Emma are burdened with entirely different concerns than a Black man passing as white might have. When Kitty gives birth to Sarah, she is forced to give her up for adoption because Sarah’s skin color will give away Kitty’s true race to her husband. Yet Kitty needs her white husband to keep her safe, even though he assaulted her to get her pregnant. As the spouse of a wealthy, white man, she is safer than she would be otherwise. Still, as a Black woman, she can never truly be safe.
Finally, Kitty is the locus of The Weight of Family Legacy in the novel. Kitty carries on her shoulders the weight of her own family legacy of abuse and exploitation of Black women in the South. The fact that she can pass as white is thanks to her white father, who raped her mother. When she leaves her fortune to the St. John sisters after she dies, she places the burden of that legacy as well as the legacy of her own passing and the lies she told to enable it on Elise and her sisters. Though Kitty spends her life hiding from her family legacy, she cannot escape it, and her secrets are eventually exposed after her death.
Elise St. John
Elise presents the modern-day counterpart to Kitty’s tale. Through Elise, the book reminds the reader that structural racism is alive and well in the US in the 21st century. In the book’s early chapters, Elise alludes to moments of real-world instances of racism over the past decade such as #blacklivesmatter, the white supremacist Charlottesville demonstration, and the racist backlash against Meghan Markle for marrying Prince Harry and against Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee during the national anthem at a football game. Elise herself notes how she must efface her Blackness in Hollywood: “They wanted Elise’s hair straight and her body stick thin. Publicly, they praised her Blackness, to show their commitment to diversity. Still, they pushed her into roles in which her race was never established, where it didn’t exist, hoping no one would notice” (19). To be successful as a Black actress, Elise must conform as closely as possible to white standards. Then, when Elise posts about #blacklivesmatter on her Instagram, she is silenced by her publicist and receives racist abuse online. Even Elise and her sisters inheriting Kitty’s fortune draws racist commentary:
Why had the White Hollywood icon given her fortune to the Black (‘Black’ being the key word) daughters of her costar in a sitcom that first aired almost fifty years ago? Some came right out and asked it, and social media was a cauldron of racist epithets; it was Meghan Markle hysteria times three (6).
Part of The Weight of Family Legacy that Elise inherits from Kitty is racist abuse. These experiences illustrate the way US structural racism continues to harm Black women in the contemporary world, even women as successful and wealthy as Elise. Elise, like Kitty, must play by certain unwritten “rules” of a racist society; if she does not, she is chastised.
The clincher comes when Elise reveals, in the book’s final chapters, that she has witnessed and experienced racist police brutality alongside her father. This is the book’s last big reminder to the reader that racism is not a thing of the past but continues to be a structural issue in the country. Although Elise’s character serves to remind the reader of these present-day issues, it is also through Elise’s character that the book provides some hope. This hope stems from the fact that Elise decides to reveal Kitty’s truth to donate Kitty’s fortune to a reparations fund for Black Americans. In this moment, Elise gives Kitty a part of her identity back that she was forced to disavow while also fully claiming her own identity as a Black woman in a way that she’s been discouraged to do until now.
Nathan Tate
Nathan’s character symbolizes US systemic racism, driving home the fact that a person does not have to be a member of the KKK to be racist. Nathan exists in the segregated world of Hollywood and sees no problem with it. Whenever Kitty urges Nathan to take action by creating films that include diverse storylines or characters, he pushes back. For example, when Kitty suggests writing a movie scene where a Black man gets pulled over by the police twice within a short time, telling Nathan that this is “realistic,” Nathan replies, “I want to stay as far away from reality as possible” (285). When Kitty urges Nathan to create movies that will change the world, he says, “I’m not here to change the world. I’m here to entertain, and I’m telling you, it won’t make any money” (328). Nathan’s comment speaks to the ways capitalism and structural racism are entwined. Nathan is a willing cog in the capitalist, racist machine of society, and, as he benefits from it, he sees no need to change it.
Again and again, Nathan proves himself complicit in the structural racism of the time. He may not consider himself a racist, but he also sees no problem in keeping the system as it is: white people on top and Black people on bottom. Kitty recognizes this about Nathan and resents him for it: “He was the only one who had ever been free: a white, rich man, he owned everything, just as he’d said. He could go anywhere without restrictions” (348). This dynamic disturbingly extends into their private lives, as well. To protect the secret of her race, Kitty makes sure to use a diaphragm as birth control every time she sleeps with Nathan. One night, Nathan overpowers her and forces himself on her before she can insert the diaphragm. The assault is especially traumatic to Kitty due to The Implications of Intersectionality. As a Black woman, it feels to her that Nathan is asserting his ownership over her body not only as a husband over his wife but also as a white man over a Black woman.
Rebecca Owens
If Nathan is a symbolic representation of the structural racism of the past, Rebecca represents the structural racism of the present. Like Nathan, Rebecca would never consider herself a racist. She is careful to distinguish herself and the “real racists” of the world, like her family, who collect “embarrassing” paraphernalia and fought for the Confederacy (96). Rebecca’s embarrassment about her family’s past also contributes to the book’s theme of The Weight of Family Legacy. Although Rebecca does not identify with her racist family legacy, she is not immune to racism. Like Nathan, Rebecca prioritizes the comfort of maintaining the status quo (and her paycheck, as Elise’s publicist) over rocking the boat by calling for change. When Elise posts #blacklivesmatter content on her Instagram, Rebecca deletes it, admitting to “being uncomfortable […] she thought all of Elise’s content as of late had been ‘off brand’” (96). Much as Nathan tries to convince Kitty that the plight of Black Americans is not her concern, Rebecca tries to convince Elise to stay out of politics: “Rebecca had told Elise to focus on acting. She didn’t understand the responsibility Elise felt, as a Black American woman, to speak out” (96). Finally, there is the suggestion made to Elise as a child at Girl Scout camp: “Just pretend like you’re White. No one will notice” (96). Rebecca, like so many other people in Elise’s sphere, demands that Elise squash down her Blackness, asking her to disavow a part of her identity much in the same way Kitty had to do. Elise sums up the problem of people like Nathan and Rebecca as follows: “Race was never not an issue for Elise, but for Rebecca, there was always a simple solution” (97). This is precisely the problem with systemic racism; people who are not impacted by racism can ignore it, upholding the racist structure that allows them to live comfortably, while those who are impacted by racism can never ignore it or the discomfort it brings them. Rebecca represents white Americans who demand that Black people remain silent about their own oppression so that they do not have to be uncomfortable.
