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Frank is an elderly Black man who plays poker with Gramps. While many of the other men in their poker group are silent, Frank, a former poet of some renown, is vocal and sometimes reads his poetry for the group. He both intrigues and frightens young Barack, as he seems to know things that Barack suspects other adults have kept from him—specifically about race. However, after an incident in which a Black man frightened Toot at the bus stop, Barack goes to Frank for advice. Frank says that Toot has good reason to be afraid, which confuses and horrifies Barack—he says that her fear suggests that she knows that Black people have a lot to be angry about. He also shares information about Gramps’s childhood and early years in Kansas that Barack didn’t know about, such as Kansas’s Jim Crow laws that dictated that Black people like Frank must move off the sidewalk for white people like Gramps. Most importantly, Frank encourages Barack to recognize that Gramps will never understand what it’s like to be Black. He’ll never understand the need for constant vigilance, and he’ll never understand the power dynamic inherent to hiring Black people to perform domestic labor for white families. Barack thinks often of Frank long after he leaves Hawaii.
Frank Quotes in Dreams from My Father
The Dreams from My Father quotes below are all either spoken by Frank or refer to Frank. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4 Quotes
“I don’t suppose he would have. Stan doesn’t like to talk about that part of Kansas much. Makes him uncomfortable. He told me once about a black girl they hired to look after your mother. A preacher’s daughter, I think it was. Told me how she became a regular part of the family. That’s how he remembers it, you understand—this girl coming in to look after somebody else’s children, her mother coming to do somebody else’s laundry. A regular part of the family.”
Related Characters:
Frank (speaker), Barack Obama, Gramps, Toot, Ann
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
80-81
Explanation and Analysis:
Here, Gramps’s Black friend Frank suggests that Barack’s white grandparents—while perfectly nice and loving—still have some ignorant and even racist attitudes. When Gramps told Frank about hiring a Black babysitter, he framed the woman’s presence in their home as familial rather than professional. Gramps likely meant to show Frank that his family home was open to Black people like him, but Frank heard this quite differently; Gramps didn’t respect the humanity of Black people enough to acknowledge that being a paid employee is actually nothing like being a family member. Gramps is able to have these delusions because he’s white and he’s so used to having power that he doesn’t even recognize when he’s using it. To him, in other words, the experience of hiring a babysitter does not register as an exercise of power over another person. Obviously, though, Frank and the babysitter both recognize that Gramps—as a white person paying for a service—is dictating the terms of the interaction. It’s absurd to suggest that this is anything like a familial relationship between equals.
This moment is also important because it helps Barack understand that Gramps, while well-meaning, often tells stories that are meant to make himself seem more moral or virtuous than he actually is. Because of these distortions, his stories don’t give Barack a true sense of who Gramps is or the world that he came from—they only reveal who Gramps wishes he were. Frank hints here that there are aspects of Gramps’s Kansan upbringing that Gramps would never mention to Barack, presumably because it would reveal his own complicity in the pervasive racism where he grew up. It’s sad that Gramps is so protective of his own image. Acknowledging his ignorance would be a step towards atoning for his past behavior and changing his future behavior, and knowing the truth about the world in which Gramps and Toot grew up would help Barack understand his family and his own experiences of racism better. However, Gramps prioritizes protecting his own image over helping his grandson understand the racism that he faces, which is selfish and emblematic of his own fragility.
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Frank Quotes in Dreams from My Father
The Dreams from My Father quotes below are all either spoken by Frank or refer to Frank. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4 Quotes
“I don’t suppose he would have. Stan doesn’t like to talk about that part of Kansas much. Makes him uncomfortable. He told me once about a black girl they hired to look after your mother. A preacher’s daughter, I think it was. Told me how she became a regular part of the family. That’s how he remembers it, you understand—this girl coming in to look after somebody else’s children, her mother coming to do somebody else’s laundry. A regular part of the family.”
Related Characters:
Frank (speaker), Barack Obama, Gramps, Toot, Ann
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
80-81
Explanation and Analysis:
Here, Gramps’s Black friend Frank suggests that Barack’s white grandparents—while perfectly nice and loving—still have some ignorant and even racist attitudes. When Gramps told Frank about hiring a Black babysitter, he framed the woman’s presence in their home as familial rather than professional. Gramps likely meant to show Frank that his family home was open to Black people like him, but Frank heard this quite differently; Gramps didn’t respect the humanity of Black people enough to acknowledge that being a paid employee is actually nothing like being a family member. Gramps is able to have these delusions because he’s white and he’s so used to having power that he doesn’t even recognize when he’s using it. To him, in other words, the experience of hiring a babysitter does not register as an exercise of power over another person. Obviously, though, Frank and the babysitter both recognize that Gramps—as a white person paying for a service—is dictating the terms of the interaction. It’s absurd to suggest that this is anything like a familial relationship between equals.
This moment is also important because it helps Barack understand that Gramps, while well-meaning, often tells stories that are meant to make himself seem more moral or virtuous than he actually is. Because of these distortions, his stories don’t give Barack a true sense of who Gramps is or the world that he came from—they only reveal who Gramps wishes he were. Frank hints here that there are aspects of Gramps’s Kansan upbringing that Gramps would never mention to Barack, presumably because it would reveal his own complicity in the pervasive racism where he grew up. It’s sad that Gramps is so protective of his own image. Acknowledging his ignorance would be a step towards atoning for his past behavior and changing his future behavior, and knowing the truth about the world in which Gramps and Toot grew up would help Barack understand his family and his own experiences of racism better. However, Gramps prioritizes protecting his own image over helping his grandson understand the racism that he faces, which is selfish and emblematic of his own fragility.
