The novel begins with a description of the Philadelphia home of the protagonist, Angela Murray. The omniscient narrator takes pains to present Opal Street and its inhabitants as ordinary, even boring, members of the Black middle class—at least when viewed through Angela’s eyes. Angela, in contrast, sees herself as unique and destined for something special. The narrator notes that “[c]olour or rather the lack of it seemed to [Angela] the one absolute prerequisite to the life of which she was always dreaming” (13).

Her parents, Junius and Mattie Murray, have strived to pull themselves out of poverty and provide their two daughters, Angela and Virginia, with a better life. Mattie’s light skin gives her the ability to pass as white, which her daughter Angela inherits. While Mattie is occasionally ashamed of her white-passing behavior—she sometimes pretends not to see her husband and daughter Virginia while out on a Saturday shopping excursion—Angela has no such qualms about the practice: “It was from her mother that Angela learned the possibilities for joy and freedom which seemed to her inherent in mere whiteness” (14). Angela is unaware of her mother’s trepidations about their adventures in passing.