Sarah Phillips is a 1984 novel written by American writer Andrea Lee. The novel takes place in Philadelphia in the period after the civil rights movement, and centers the protagonist, Sarah Phillips, born in 1953, a daughter of a black middle-class family living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. From a first-person narrative point of view, Sarah offers chronological snapshots of her and her family's lives. She illuminates realities of middle-class Black American life, particularly around the time after the Civil Rights Movement via fictionalized stories. A later version of the book begins with a foreword by Valerie Smith. She talks about her experiences teaching this novel in her own class, and how her students did not take a liking to the protagonist, Sarah Phillips. She then contextualizes the novel, which actually began as a set of short stories debuted in The New Yorker, published during a period in which the black middle class rose in numbers. Sarah Phillips, Smith says, is in a lot of ways everything that her predecessors, both in terms of fictional characters like her and real world individuals who identified with her story, could dream of: being black and middle class, achieving success in the eyes of white America.
Plot The vast majority of the novel is Sarah's reflection and retelling of her childhood and young adult experiences. However, the first chapter, "In France", is set in the present day. Here, Sarah is traveling with three French men in Paris, including her primary lover, Henri. A lot of the content of this chapter centers the racialized romance that Sarah—a light-skinned American black woman—and Henri—a white European man—share. For example, (put quote here about the exotic women in Brazil comment Henri makes). Another thing evident from this chapter is that Sarah purposefully escaped her life back in Philadelphia (insert paraphrase or quote here), though while there, she does express a general nostalgia for her old life: "Some chemistry of air, soil, and civilization filled me with unwilling nostalgia, and I kept a sharp lookout in London for certain types of tourists: prosperous black Americans..."
The novel consists, from this first chapter on, of Sarah's reflections on her life until the present. The second chapter, taking place in the summer of 1963—recognizable because of the Civil Rights Movement—commences the flashback. Sarah takes readers back to her childhood in "New African", so they see the life and community she misses back in France. Sarah's father, Reverend James Phillips, is the pastor of New African Baptist Church in South Philadelphia, though as Sarah points out in her narration, "there was little very new or African about [it]" The church had been around since 1813, and since then, had a membership of predominantly middle-class, light-skinned Black attendees. Sarah reveals that since she and her brother, Matthew, were children, they were "dispelling" the traditions of the church, taking a secular pride in knowing how Communion was prepared. Although their father is a pastor, this was not forbidden in their household. Sarah's parents are not strict about religion for their kids, and do not force them to be super involved in the church or the religion beyond attending services. Other family members, however, disagree with that parenting, and pressure Sarah, in particular, to get more involved and get baptized. A brief physical conflict ensues between Sarah and Aunt Bessie, in which Aunt Bessie tries to physically push Sarah to get baptized after her brother Matthew had been baptized. What surprises Sarah is that her father never brings the fight up, and does not force her to attend church either. She regards this as a nonverbal, peculiar arrangement between.
In the next chapter, "Mother", Sarah focuses more on her mother, Grace Renfrew Phillips. She describes her mother's background as having "been brought up with all the fussy little airs and graces of middle-class colored girls born around the time of World War I" and having a bit of a classical education. She goes on to talk about how her mother and other little girls she grew up around aspired to marry high-status, light-skinned men. She also shares that her mother has a bit of a strange connection to the bizarre, and gets excited by strange stories. Grace also worked as a schoolteacher. Outside of that occupation, she did a lot of housekeeping for their family, such as cooking large meals. The chapter then moves into the aftermath of Judge Barber's suicide. Judge Roland Barber was both a member of the NAACP and Sarah's father's congregation. Sarah and her mom go to Judge Barber's house to pay respects to the family, bringing food, and encounter his daughter Phyllis. There is an uncomfortable air about the entire event, and even Sarah and Grace are not really sure how to speak about it beyond an odd dialogue about loss. The chapter ends with the pair returning home, and Grace cooking.
In "Gypsies", Sarah describes her black suburban, middle-class neighborhood near Philadelphia, Franklin Place, in the summer. She plays a lot with her best friend at the time, Lynn Yancy, a girl often confused as Sarah's sister because of their similar light-skin and frizzy braided hair. One day, while the two of them are hanging out, a red truck they had never seen before pulls into their neighborhood. A man and woman get out of the truck, and the woman asked Sarah if the neighborhood was all-colored, and she seems surprised that colored people are living there. She also tells the girls that they are lucky that they get to play, because her own son has to work very hard and therefore cannot play. The couple then leaves, and later that night, Sarah relays the story to her parents, who explain that the man and woman were "gypsies" who sold furniture. This sparks a particular comment from Sarah's father, who says: "Well, everybody's got… to… feel… better… than… somebody… Most of the world despises Gypsies, but a Gypsy can always look down on a Negro. Heck, that fellow was right to spit! You can dress it up with trees and big houses and people who don't stink too bad, but a nigger neighborhood is still a nigger neighborhood!" Sarah's mother yells for him to stop, and Sarah narrates that she had never heard him speak that way before. She remains scared of the "gypsies", and they never returned to Franklin Place.
"Marching" begins with a story about Sarah, her brother Matthew, her father, and her Uncle Freddy on a trip to Harlem in 1959. Her father and Uncle Freddy have a playful exchange where they say things in a distinctive voice such as "Look at the tenements and the trash! I'm awfully glad I'm not a Negro, aren't you Frederick?" Matthew then explains to Sarah "They're joking, silly -- pretending to be white" Sarah then details her upbringing specifically in terms of their father's instructions. While Reverend Phillips tells Sarah and Matthew to "say 'Negro' with near-military briskness when we spoke of ourselves in the classrooms of our Quaker school" and also talks a lot about civil rights, he also speaks about Negroes, or "we" as people who ruin neighborhoods and communities when they move in. Later, in July, Reverend Phillips and Sarah go to D.C. in 1963 to visit some family. While in a cab on its way to Union Station, soon to head home to Philadelphia, the cab driver and Reverend Phillips strike up a conversation about the upcoming march on August 28, which the reader can infer is the March on Washington. Afterwards, Sarah tells her father that she wants to attend the march, too, and he refuses. Two months later, she and Matthew watcht the march on television while under the care of Aunt Bessie, and Sarah begins to imagine her parents and her parents' friends there. Matthew declares that the march is stupid, and this begins an argument between him and Sarah, who says that the folks marching really believe in something. This concludes the chapter.
Sarah begins attending middle school in "Servant Problems". The Prescott School for Girls where she attends is a school where the teachers and students are white but all the domestic staff are black. There is a cook whom Sarah describes as having yellowish-brown skin who waves often at her and her friend, but she never returns his greeting unlike her white friend. As the first and only black student at that school during the mid-1960s, Sarah experiences social isolation with the exception of her one friend, a student named Gretchen Manning. Gretchen and Sarah share a common isolating experience, and met after both being put in Squad Six, which Sarah defines as the group for "athletic pariahs" in the school. They thought of themselves as "revolutionaries", at the school, and thus decide to break the school rule one day by climbing to the forbidden top floor. What they see is a bed with a black woman in it, whom Sarah recognizes as one of the maids at the school. Another black figure comes into view, soon to enter the room, but before they do, Sarah and Gretchen run from the floor, with Gretchen being indignant about the "conditions of the top floor", and Sarah wishing to avoid thinking about any of the black workers due to her discomfort. At some point, the two also begin to share a love of theater, and act on this by auditioning for the school play. However, when Sarah gets cast for a role for which she did not auditio—the role of Rheba, the "very black" maid of the play—she decides to not take the role and instead laughs uncontrollably. This ability to laugh, she reflects, "seems to bring [her] closer to growing up". The chapter ends with Sarah and Gretchen again seeing the black cook, and Sarah again not waving back at him, except that this time, "[she] looked seriously at him, as if he had something to teach [her]".
By the time of the chapter "Matthew and Martha", Sarah is about fourteen. Her brother, Matthew, is a first-year at Swarthmore College, and decides to visit home for a Sunday dinner with a guest: his new girlfriend, Martha Greenfield, also a first-year at Swarthmore. Martha is white, and so the family—namely Grace and Cousin Polly—is not particularly pleased. While Reverend Phillips seeks to smooth things over, Grace and Matthew get into an argument over his having a white girlfriend. Matthew argues that his mother is being unbelievable considering she sent her kids to predominantly white schools their entire lives, and then get upset when "the inevitable happens". The argument ends with Matthew and Martha taking off in their car. Later, Sarah overhears her mother and father arguing, and Grace yells at Sarah as well in frustration from the argument with Matthew.