The Darkest Child

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of physical and sexual abuse, child sex trafficking, lynching, infanticide, and segregation. The source material includes racial slurs and ableist and anti-gay language, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes.

Tangy Mae Quinn is the novel’s protagonist and first-person narrator. She’s 13 at the beginning of the novel, and by the end, she’s 18. Tangy is smart, responsible, and academically motivated—qualities that please her teachers but do not always please her mother or siblings. Tangy is relentlessly loyal and loving toward her siblings, and sometimes, her mother uses Tangy’s loyalty and love to coerce her into being subjected to abuse without protest or resistance. Despite the extreme abuse and hardship Tangy endures, she remains incredibly resilient, a quality that she believes unites all of her mother’s children. Tangy illustrates The Complexities of Mother-Daughter Relationships Within Troubled Families because she loves her mother despite her abusive tendencies, and she sticks around for longer than is technically necessary because she’s reluctant to leave her siblings at her mother’s mercy. However, ultimately, she realizes that her only real option is to leave.

Tangy also illustrates