Like One of the Family Summary

Although it is classified as a novel, Like One of the Family does not have either the movement of plot or the change in character usually associated with that genre. Instead, Alice Childress’s work is a series of monologues, each of which is independent, even though all involve the same speaker and the same listener. This format can be explained by the fact that these monologues originally appeared separately, some of them in the newspaper Freedom, where they were called “Conversations from Life,” and others in the Baltimore Afro-American, under the heading “Here’s Mildred.” Sixty-two of the monologues were assembled for publication in book form, but there seems to have been no principle governing the order in which they were printed, other than an effort to vary the subject of discussion from one chapter to the next.

While it is not structured conventionally, Like One of the Family has its own kind of unity, achieved primarily through the use of a single voice. In each chapter, Mildred Johnson relates her experiences to Marge, her downstairs neighbor in a Harlem apartment building. Almost all these conversations take place either in Mildred’s three-room apartment or in Marge’s. Whatever the location, the pattern is almost always the same. One of the women stops in at the end of the workday or in the evening, and the two sit down, usually in the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, and visit.

In the chapter “All About My Job,” Mildred explains why this friendship is so important to her. She...