66 pages • 2 hours read
Kim JohnsonInvisible Son
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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.
Themes
The Importance of a Safe Home
Content Warning: This section discusses child abuse, murder, racism, racist violence, and police brutality.
Invisible Son begins with Andre Jackson’s return home after spending time in a juvenile detention center. As he arrives, he wonders if life will be the same as it was before. Over the course of the novel, he learns that his family still loves and respects him. Moreover, as he uncovers the Whitakers’ secrets, he learns that no family or home life is ever as perfect as it seems.
Andre’s life back at home is different at first because he must abide by strict restrictions, which alienates him and makes him feel self-conscious within his community. He says, “All I wanted was to come home, so I had no problem with having community monitoring instead of a longer detention sentence” (10). However, the reality of the community monitoring is difficult for him because it is a constant reminder that he is being watched. When he first ventures out of the house to run errands with his friend, Marcus expects him to call and report his whereabouts. Likewise, Andre also struggles with the recognition that some people, like Sierra, initially assume that he really was guilty. Nevertheless, with the loving support of his friends and family, Andre begins to readjust and regain his confidence.
Andre also gradually realizes that not all families are what they seem, especially those who, like the Whitakers, place a high premium on keeping up appearances. At the start of the novel, he sees the Whitakers as the epitome of an ideal family: Siblings who tease each other, parents who love them, and generous invitations for friends to come over and hang out. As he uncovers the extent of the Whitakers’ crimes, he realizes that they used their apparent respectability to hide their dark secrets, including the abuse of their children and the murder of Eric. As Andre reflects, “All these years I looked across the way at the Whitakers like they had everything. I was jealous too many times […] And now everything’s come tumbling down” (378). Andre realizes that while other families may appear to have more money or social prestige than his own, it is his family that provides a truly safe and loving home, which is priceless.
Andre thus learns an important lesson about family and the importance of a safe home. At the novel’s end, he decides to stay near his family and go to community college for his first year. Unlike the restrictions imposed on him by community monitoring, it is a restriction that he welcomes.
Black Lives Matter and White Communities
As a young Black man just out of juvenile detention, Andre has to regularly confront racism in his community. Over the course of the novel, he must also contend with how members of white communities can sometimes appear to show support for people of color while still perpetrating subtle (and not so subtle) aggressions against them. As Andre navigates various forms of discrimination, the Black Lives Matter movement helps him find a way forward.
Andre explains how he received “the other talk” from his father when he was young, with Malcolm emphasizing, “[W]e were suspects before we were citizens” (17). Malcolm’s warning speaks to how Black boys like Andre must be more careful than their white peers, as some people will have preconceived notions about how dangerous a Black boy or man could be. Thus, Black men have to act a certain way in order to survive. By the time Andre is 17, he has already experienced racism and double standards firsthand: He was easily framed and convicted for the robberies, while his white friend Gavin—who was actually guilty—was never seen as a real suspect. Likewise, there is also an incident when Andre is held to the ground by a police officer because someone assumed that he was “suspicious” just because he was Black.
Andre also notices apathy among some white community members, as they sometimes rally to a cause without taking long-term action or working for systemic changes that could threaten the status quo. Such superficial support is reflected in Mr. Whitaker’s political aspirations and rhetoric about running for commissioner after what happened to Andre or how he and his wife have brought Andre along on vacations or bought things for him. They care more about the appearance of taking care of people of color rather than the people themselves.
Andre reaches an important turning point in his character arc once the Black Lives Matter protests become more intense and widespread. Andre places this movement within the larger context of Black history in the United States, calling the incidents of police brutality “live lynchings” (241). From Emmett Till to the present, Black lives have always been at risk, and Andre is at first skeptical that the 2020 movement for Black lives is going to have any effect. He points out that it shouldn’t take “eight minutes and forty-six seconds of brutality to slam collective consciousness into people who have always been silent” (242).
However, at the climax of the novel, Andre does find some real hope being at the Black Lives Matter protest: “I didn’t want to come out here tonight […] Then I saw other people fighting with their voices, and I couldn’t let that be ruined. Then nothing else mattered […] My voice, your voice, our voice […] matter” (354). He comes to believe that real change can happen when people come together in protest, no matter what forces work against them.
The Impacts of Displacement and Gentrification
Stories of urban renewal often disregard the effects on Black communities. Marginalized communities are often associated with blight and poverty; as a result, they are often pushed out when white people move to neighborhoods and property values increase. Andre sees this history in his grandparents’ community in Albina in Portland, Oregon, where his father maintains one of the last Black-owned businesses. Through Andre’s community, the novel examines some of the impacts of displacement and gentrification.
Early in the novel, Johnson emphasizes the historical nature of the Vanport flood in 1948, in which thousands of members of the Black community were displaced when the Columbia River overflowed (See: Background). Andre explains how this history is typically forgotten, saying, “Ten thousand homes washed away and it’s like nobody cares. Like it never happened” (51). The mural on Malcolm’s store commemorates the lives lost in the flood, but Andre knows that the lack of flood warnings was itself an expression of apathy from white Portlanders, who had forced Black workers to settle on land prone to flooding.
A second example of housing disparities in Portland comes when Andre meets Paul, Sierra, and the other Whitaker siblings in Albina Park. Andre remembers how, when he was younger, Black families would take care of the park and socialize there. As gentrification occurred and fewer families could afford to live in Albina, Black community members were pushed out, leaving the park dominated by newly arrived white homeowners. He observes how “[t]he park is haunted with the memories of everyone who left” (220). This long-term displacement is further emphasized by the various Black Lives Matter signs on the front lawns of white households: Andre’s “throat aches from seeing the city with more Black Lives Matter signs than Black people. A city where [he] do[esn’t] belong” (255).
When Andre begins working at the bookstore during the pandemic, he is joining a movement to maintain the history of his neighborhood and Black Portlanders in general. Early in the novel, he comments on the genealogy of Black history there, saying, “This is what plagues Black Portland. Stories passed down from generations about what the small enclave of neighborhoods of Albina used to be like. Being able to say you had a cousin who went to Jefferson High or a relative still lives in the neighborhood was like claiming you’re still there” (219-20). By being a part of a Black business commemorating the proud history of Black folks in the city, Andre works for the preservation and remembrance of his community, despite efforts to displace and ignore them.
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