Junie

Junie is the main character, or protagonist, of the novel. She is 16 years old and is enslaved on Bellereine Plantation in Lowndes County, Alabama. Because Junie was born into enslavement, she has never known a life beyond Bellereine; she is accustomed to being beholden to her enslavers, the McQueens. At the start of the novel, Junie is resigned to her circumstances. She knows that her life is defined by violence, subjugation, and suffering, but she firmly believes that there’s “a life in everything, even if you have to squeeze in to find it. And even if it’s on the edges” (241). Junie isn’t an oblivious character; rather, her outlook on life conveys her simultaneous innocence and capacity for hope. She wants to believe in love, joy, and goodness, even amid her harrowing circumstances.

These aspects of Junie’s character speak to the author’s desire to humanize her character. In the Afterword, Eckstine says that with Junie’s story, she “wanted to explore” the possibilities of creating “a character with dreams, ambitions, love, grief, and flaws in the same way every human has; not as a means of diminishing the horror, but instead shining a light on the individual of a group of people many have grown to perceive monolithically” (355).