"Melanctha" is Stein's story about a biracial girl who does not quite fit into society and eventually dies from tuberculosis. To describe the characters, Stein uses strings of adjectives each time they appear, and in this story, the color of a character's skin directly corresponds to how Stein describes them. The lighter the skin, the better the character. For this reason, Stein's story is very racist, and the story pushes the idea of racial essentialism and denounces Melanctha as not belonging to any race.