The Skin I'm In

Miss Michael Saunders is the new English teacher at McClenton Middle School. She is sassy, confident, high-achieving, and a perfectionist. Miss Saunders used to have a lucrative corporate job involving much travel, a competitive environment, and a designer wardrobe. She has come to McClenton Middle School as part of a new program that allows professionals to take a year-long leave of absence to teach in under resourced schools. Miss Saunders undertook this program to give back to the community and figure out if she wants to be a teacher—and she decides she does.

The students immediately see her as unusual. Her first name is traditionally masculine—Michael. She is a very tall woman, with small feet, and she has a large white birthmark across one side of her face, which Maleeka describes as being “like somebody tossed acid on it or something” (7). Because of these characteristics, Maleeka considers Miss Saunders a “freak like me” (7). Here, Maleeka both rejects Miss Saunders in the beginning and identifies with her. Throughout the story, Miss Saunders fosters Maleeka’s writing talent, believes in Maleeka’s potential, and tries to positively guide her. At first, Maleeka is reluctant to be associated with this “freak,” but ultimately, Maleeka grows to like Miss Saunders and sees her as a protector and supporter—“Then Miss Saunders hugs me to her, and I feel safe inside” (95).

Momma is Maleeka’s mother. When Daddy died three years ago, Momma fell into a deep depression. At just the age of 10, Maleeka had to become her caretaker since they feared getting separated if they turned to authorities or family. Once she was better, Momma began sewing clothes to cope with the grief. The clothing is poorly made, but Maleeka wears it anyway, changing at school so she won’t hurt her mother’s feelings. Momma works hard to maintain the family financially, pursuing random ways to get extra money, like playing the lottery or selling Tupperware. She is resilient and never gives up.

For Maleeka, Momma is a positive influence and a source of love. Despite all the pain she has suffered, she maintains a childlike, eccentric personality. For example, she is known to “put down her groceries and jump rope with eight-year-old kids on the street” (34). While people sometimes assume she has a mental illness and speak to her in a demeaning way, she is always kind, loving, and encouraging. Through her own resilience, uniqueness, and kindness, she is a role model for Maleeka, who demonstrates similar traits.

Daddy—named Gregory Madison—is Maleeka’s father. He died three years ago when his cab crashed into a bread truck. He was a tall, dark-skinned, happy man who wrote poetry and encouraged Maleeka to love herself. After his death, the savings and Social Security benefits he left behind helped Maleeka and Momma to survive financially until Momma recovered. The memory of Daddy is a recurring element in the novel.

While Daddy is not alive in The Skin I’m In, he still plays a significant role in Maleeka’s character development and in the narrative. As a character, Daddy serves to remind Maleeka of who she is and to instill her with confidence. When Maleeka finds the poem he wrote for her, it triggers a turn in the narrative toward her self-confidence. It is after reading that poem that Maleeka decides to cut her hair and calls herself “nice-looking” (28). That poem identifies Maleeka as someone beloved and beautiful, not despite but because of the dark skin that the kids tease her about. Daddy returns as a source of encouragement again in Chapter 9 when Maleeka remembers his old words of wisdom: “[Y]ou got to see yourself with your own eyes. That’s the only way you gonna know who you really are” (31).

Charlese Jones is another seventh-grade student at McClenton Middle School. She has failed the seventh grade several times, and now she offers Maleeka a superficial form of friendship in exchange for Maleeka doing her homework. While she lends Maleeka clothing, the gesture isn’t charitable; Charlese simply refuses to be seen with someone dressed poorly. Charlese is the antagonist of The Skin I’m In. An antagonist is the character who creates narrative conflict and presents the main opposition to the protagonist’s goals. Through her unkindness, exploitation, and negative influence, Charlese stands in the way of Maleeka’s self-acceptance, mental health, and academic standing.

Charlese is also Maleeka’s foil. Foils are characters whose contrasting personalities are designed to emphasize each other’s characterization. While Maleeka is kind, socially outcast, and quiet, Charlese is mean, popular, and loud. For example, when she is rude to the lunch ladies and gets a bad lunch as a result, she behaves uncontrollably, yelling and demanding Maleeka fix her lunch. While the characters are different in these ways, they are similar in that Charlese also has few people to rely on in her family; Maleeka has only Momma, and Charlese has only her older sister, Juju. While Momma pursues random ventures to make money, Juju throws never-ending house parties to make money. In short, Charlese has her own struggles at home that have led to her academic underperformance and unkindness. However, Charlese and Maleeka respond to their hardships very differently.

John-John is “the smallest seventh grader in the world” (8). While he and Maleeka are both dark-skinned, he has been teasing her about being “too black” since the second grade. He and his friends constantly make jokes about her and made up a mean song: “Maleeka, Maleeka—baboom, boom, boom, we sure wanna keep her, baboom, boom, boom, but she so black, baboom, boom, boom, we just can’t see her” (8). John-John first began teasing her in the second grade when she asked to move from her seat next to him. He thought she looked down on him and wanted to sit next to lighter-skinned Caleb instead; really, she just wanted to see the chalkboard better.

Like Maleeka, John-John struggles with self-hate, but he copes with it by projecting it onto Maleeka through bullying. To distract himself from his own self-esteem struggles, he mocks Maleeka for being dark. John-John, like Charlese, demonstrates how bullies are often mean to others because they face their own challenges but embrace cowardly, selfish coping methods. In addition, because of their difference in gender, John-John can mock Maleeka’s skin but avoid getting teased. This demonstrates how society judges girls’ appearances more harshly.