If You Come Softly

Jeremiah “Miah” Roselind is a 16-year-old, Black boy born and raised in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. As an only child to his writer mother, Nelia, and filmmaker father, Norman, he grows up in a creative house that is always filled with his parents’ friends and co-workers. Once his parents separate, however, Jeremiah is plagued by feelings of emptiness and loneliness in the home he shares with just his mother. Jeremiah is also deeply influenced by his late grandma, his father’s mother, who he often visited in the south. Though his grandma has passed, Jeremiah spends much of the book understanding how he still feels her presence around him and questioning what happens to people and love after death. Jeremiah’s awareness of his Blackness is something that has always been a part of his life, even if his family and community have always had differing ideas of what it meant to be Black. He has always felt good in his skin in Fort Greene, but he notices the weight of his skin when he takes a step beyond the neighborhood.

Over the course of the book, Jeremiah’s relationship with Ellie forces him to question how race both defines and doesn’t define a person. He is changed by the hope and joy of finding shared experiences and feelings with someone outside of his community, but he is ultimately a tragic victim of the dangers that come with being Black in a racist world. Through Jeremiah, Woodson creates a realistic character who can help readers of other races empathize with the plight of Black Americans, who face systemic racism that regularly endangers their lives

Marion Eisen is Ellie’s mother, as well as a mother to Ellie’s older siblings and a wife to Ellie’s doctor father. Though Marion is often present in Ellie’s life now, throughout Ellie’s childhood, she has left the family unannounced when feeling especially stressed and lost in life. Marion has always struggled with understanding herself as a mother, but she believes that her kids are her whole life. Throughout the book, Marion strives to be close to Ellie, asking her about schools and any boys that might be in Ellie’s life. However, when Ellie brings up their complicated past, or makes her own decisions about school and boys, Marion feels that Ellie is still angry and trying to hurt her. By the book’s end, Marion seems to grow to accept Ellie’s needs and decisions. She attends Jeremiah’s funeral with Ellie and eventually understands that Ellie will be beginning her own life as she starts college.