# Home to Harlem — Character guide

> Key figures in Home to Harlem by Claude McKay.

- [Jake Brown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/jake.md): Jake returns from two years overseas to a Harlem that burns in his blood, and he moves through it with a rough, magnetic charm that makes buddies want to fight for him and women want to keep him. He loves life too much t
- [Ray](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/ray.md): Ray returns to New York after a diner run and goes straight to check on Jake, alarmed by the relapse in a way that reveals how easily his fine-strung nature responds to sensations Jake barely registers. Where Jake laughs
- [Zeddy Plummer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/zeddy.md): Zeddy greets Jake in Uncle Doc's saloon with kisses and French slang, the two veterans trading stories of Brest and the graves they crawled out of. But in Harlem his buddies snicker that he's kept under Gin-head Susy's s
- [Felice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/felice.md): Jake wakes in perfect peace to coffee, cream, and doughnuts, then finds the folded note in his pocket signed by a baby girl to a honey boy, and Harlem suddenly feels like his. He checks himself from running back, telling
- [Gin-head Susy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/susy.md): Susy throws sociable evenings for yellow poolroom youngsters and bellboys, holding a congenital contempt for women and a vain desire for a lover who will stay once she's cleaned him up and straightened his hair. Her gues
- [Congo Rose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/congo_rose.md): Rose shops on Fifth Avenue as if she were a dark foreign lady of title, then takes a taxicab uptown to the house where she keeps Jake's address and her claim on him. When Madame Laura arrives asking after him, Rose pops 
- [Jerco](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/jerco.md): A friend and fellow worker of Jake's on the railroad, part of the laboring community.
- [Billy Biasse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/billy_biasse.md): Billy Biasse moves through the saloons, poolrooms, and buffet flats where Jake's Harlem luck gets made and unmade, one of the buddies who ease round to the short side of the bar. His specialty is the teasing that cuts: h
- [Miss Curdy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/miss_curdy.md): Miss Curdy holds her own in the kitchen-table philosophy of Harlem's working women, insisting she has 'seen the real life, mixing as I used to in real society.' When Lavinia counters that she knows society too — only fro
- [Madame Laura](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/laura.md): A woman who runs a boarding house, providing a home for some of the characters.
- [Yaller Prince](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/yaller_prince.md): A light-skinned man, a rival or foil in the Harlem social dynamics.
- [Ma Lawton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/ma_lawton.md): An older woman, a maternal figure in the community, providing wisdom and care.
- [Aunt Hattie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/aunt_hattie.md): An older relative or community elder, offering a link to the past and traditions.
- [Agatha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/agatha.md): A woman who appears in the narrative, possibly a romantic interest or acquaintance.
- [Strawberry Lips](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/strawberry_lips.md): A character with a distinctive nickname, part of the Harlem scene.
- [Madame Adeline Suarez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/home_to_harlem_se/characters/madame_adeline_suarez.md): A woman of some status, possibly a business owner or socialite in Harlem.

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