Frank Character Analysis

Frank is an elderly Black man who plays poker with Gramps. While many of the other men in their poker group are silent, Frank, a former poet of some renown, is vocal and sometimes reads his poetry for the group. He both intrigues and frightens young Barack, as he seems to know things that Barack suspects other adults have kept from him—specifically about race. However, after an incident in which a Black man frightened Toot at the bus stop, Barack goes to Frank for advice. Frank says that Toot has good reason to be afraid, which confuses and horrifies Barack—he says that her fear suggests that she knows that Black people have a lot to be angry about. He also shares information about Gramps’s childhood and early years in Kansas that Barack didn’t know about, such as Kansas’s Jim Crow laws that dictated that Black people like Frank must move off the sidewalk for white people like Gramps. Most importantly, Frank encourages Barack to recognize that Gramps will never understand what it’s like to be Black. He’ll never understand the need for constant vigilance, and he’ll never understand the power dynamic inherent to hiring Black people to perform domestic labor for white families. Barack thinks often of Frank long after he leaves Hawaii.