Sam

Sam, who goes by Sambo, is a recurring figure in Queenie Jenkins’s account of social spaces where she and he are often the only Black people present. His refusal to acknowledge her and his public distancing from Black culture make him less a confidant than a source of friction: his presence sharpens Queenie’s awareness of isolation, and of how racial identity can be negotiated differently even within the same room.

Identity and Background

Queenie describes Sam as short, stocky, dark-skinned, and closely shaved bald. His nickname is a racial slur; when she offered to back him up if he wanted people to stop using it, he insisted that it was ironic. The account gives no independent explanation of his reasons for keeping the name, so the tension between its history and his defense of it remains unresolved.

Sam went to boarding school with James and was adopted by white parents. Queenie connects that background to his public ridicule of things she considers expressions of Black culture. That connection is her interpretation, not a stated account of Sam’s motives. She also describes him with a mute, blond girlfriend, whom she sees him taking around as if their relationship were a symbolic display of whiteness; the judgment reveals Queenie’s suspicion of his performed distance from Black identity as much as it describes their social appearances.

Conduct Toward Queenie

At a party hosted by Fran and James, Fran asks whether Queenie has come with Tom. Queenie avoids discussing their situation and is ushered into a corner beside Sam, the only other Black person there. His resemblance to Roy unsettles her; she gives Sam a hurried nod, and he looks back blankly. The encounter fuses two kinds of discomfort for her: the visual reminder of an abusive figure from her family life and Sam’s apparent refusal of even a minimal greeting.

Queenie says Sam has been introduced to her many times and pretends not to know her each time. She finds the pattern tedious and imagines confronting him, insisting that the two Black guests could simply acknowledge one another rather than have him dismiss her. But she keeps that response to herself. In her account, the possibility of being made unwelcome in white company makes keeping a low profile feel safer than challenging him publicly.

Conflict and Narrative Significance

At the same party, after Queenie’s separation from Tom, she walks past Sam and sees disdain in his expression. She shivers as she used to when Roy looked at her that way. The comparison registers Queenie’s bodily response; it does not establish that Sam and Roy share a history or intention. Sam’s look becomes part of a scene in which a room crowded with people still offers Queenie little sense of ease or belonging.

Sam’s brief appearances expose the limits of assuming that shared racial identity automatically produces solidarity. Queenie wants recognition from someone who occupies a position like hers at these gatherings, but she experiences his behavior as dismissal and cultural repudiation instead. The portrait remains filtered through her first-person perspective: Sam’s defense of his nickname is reported, while the deeper reasons for his conduct are not supplied. No reconciliation or change in their relationship is shown in these scenes.