Lisa Carter Character Analysis

Mother to Starr and Sekani, wife to Maverick, and step-mother to Seven, Lisa is a deeply loving and supportive presence in her children’s lives. After becoming pregnant with Starr as a teenager, Lisa was thrown out of her house by Nana and lived with Mrs. Rosalie, Khalil’s grandmother. She works as a nurse in a Garden Heights clinic and, along with Maverick, attempts to educate her children about racial injustice. She raises Seven like her own son, despite him being the product of Maverick’s affair with Iesha, and advises Starr to determine whether the good outweighs the bad in her own strained relationship with Hailey. Lisa desperately wants to move away from Garden Heights, something over which she frequently clashes with Maverick. At the end of the novel, Lisa obtains a higher paying job at a hospital to support the family’s move out to a safer neighborhood.