46 pages • 1-hour read
All Boys Aren't Blue
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
George Matthew Johnson
George Matthew Johnson is the author and narrator of the memoir. They are an activist for queer and Black rights and a journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as Teen Vogue and Buzzfeed. They were born in Plainfield, New Jersey, where most of the chapters up to Part 4 take place. They attended the HBCU Virginia Union University, where they became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha.
Johnson intends All Boys Aren’t Blue to be both a resource for Black and queer youth and a primer for their cisgender/heterosexual and/or white peers. Johnson’s life experience as a queer person growing up is not extraordinary, except perhaps for their very accepting family. By writing of experiences familiar to many kids who feel different, Johnson creates possibilities for queer youth to see themselves in Johnson’s story. The Black family dynamics that feature prominently likewise provide Black representation not often seen in literature.
Johnson writes primarily to queer youth in the way Johnson wishes somebody had written to them. This makes Johnson’s writing accessible but leaves some things unexplained. For example, Johnson does not define terms like “transgender” and leaves its opposite, “cisgender,” out of the memoir entirely. Though Johnson is nonbinary, the term only appears once in the memoir and not in reference to Johnson. Assuming knowledge on the reader’s part lets them write to an audience, queer youth, who are already familiar with what Johnson is saying through firsthand experience, whether they have the vocabulary for it or not.
Nanny
Nanny is Johnson’s maternal grandmother. She is something of a family matriarch and watches over her grandchildren while their parents are busy with work. Johnson mentions that they have many other LGBTQ+ people in their family, many of whom Nanny knew and likely helped raise. Nanny understands that Johnson is different and singlehandedly rescues them from self-isolation as a child. Nanny’s interactions with Hope also illustrate her acceptance of the LGBTQ+ members of her family, as she is the last person to see Hope before she dies.
Nanny is perhaps the most influential figure in the memoir. Her acceptance of Johnson as they grow up is silent but constant. At no point does she ever make Johnson feel unloved—something many queer youth experience from family. Nanny understands that her grandchildren need different things from her. She does not use a one-size-fits-all approach that would likely have hurt Johnson. When Johnson finally comes out to her, she says they need to bring home any men they date to meet her first, just like any other grandchild of hers (84). Nanny is one of many cisgender and heterosexual characters who nevertheless support Johnson fully. Within the narrative Johnson crafts, Nanny speaks to non-queer readers as an example to look up to when interacting with queer family members.
Johnson’s Mother
Johnson’s mother is another key supportive figure in their life. She worked as a secretary for the police department where her husband worked and also ran a salon in Plainfield. The “9-5, 5-9” work schedules of Johnson’s mother and father led Johnson to spend much of their childhood with Nanny (18). Despite this, Johnson’s mother is supportive of Johnson and the rest of the queer people in her family. It is Johnson’s mother who tells Nanny she must accept Hope and use the correct pronouns and name for her. It is also Johnson’s mother who explains that she has several LGBTQ+ relatives, so accepting queer family members isn’t a particularly special occurrence for her. Narratively, Johnson’s mother serves to normalize families with queer people in them. She symbolizes Johnson’s hope that non-LGBTQ+ people can be fully accepting and fight for the acceptance of their LGBTQ+ friends and family.
The Alpha Phi Alpha Line Brothers
When Johnson joins Alpha Phi Alpha, they are grouped with eight men that quickly become like family: Wayne, Charles, Gerald, David, Kenny, Travon, Dimetrius, and Kris. It is significant, however, that Kenny is the only one whom readers learn about as a person. Johnson presents the line brothers as a monolithic group because it is what they represent that is important for the purposes of the memoir. The line brothers are people, half queer and half not-queer, who sought traditional masculinity, but by joining the fraternity and finding a family with one another, all of them are able to define masculinity on their own terms. This is especially important for the four line brothers (five, including Johnson) who are closeted and find the courage to come out through their brotherhood. This is why Johnson doesn’t tell readers which line brother they told about having sex for the first time: What is important to Johnson is the fact that they had anybody they could proudly tell about their experience.
Kenny is the one line brother that Johnson characterizes and gives space to on the page. This is partly because of how much Kenny’s death affects Johnson and partly because he was the first person Johnson ever came out to, making it important to introduce him to readers. Johnson writes that Kenny was the very kind of person “society kept telling me would never accept me” (168), yet Kenny completely shattered this assumption. If Nanny and Johnson’s mother symbolize what non-queer family members should aspire to, Kenny symbolizes what non-queer strangers should aspire to when dealing with a queer person. Kenny had no familial connection to Johnson that might have pressured him to accept Johnson, but Kenny accepts Johnson and goes from being a stranger to being family.
Unlock analysis of every key figure
Get a detailed breakdown of each key figure’s role and motivations.
- Explore in-depth profiles for every key figure
- Trace key figures’ turning points and relationships
- Connect important figures to a book’s themes and key ideas