Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of racism.

Paul is the first-person narrator and protagonist of The Young Landlords. He is a 15-year-old Black student living with his father and mother in Harlem. Walter Dean Myers initially portrays Paul as an average person who does not necessarily stand out in a crowd. At the outset of the narrative, he does not have a summer job and spends his free time hanging out with a group of teens about his age. Paul does not see himself as a natural leader, describing himself as not the bravest person, not the most athletic, and not someone incapable of making mistakes. Through a serendipitous series of events, Paul ends up owning a Harlem tenement building mostly because he happens to be the oldest person in his group of teenage friends.

While the book functions as an exposé of life in Harlem in 1979, the profound changes and growth Paul experiences over the course of the narrative suggest that the book is a coming-of-age story as well. Myers does not tell the readers Paul’s name until almost 30 pages into the novel, reinforcing Paul’s sense of personal insignificance.