Tracy Deen has just returned from World War I to his home in Maxwell, Georgia, where he begins a sexual relationship with a college educated mulatto girl, Nonnie Anderson, whom he has known most of his life. Tracy is obsessed with Nonnie and wavers between feeling he is in love and knowing he must back away from this folly. Nonnie, on the other hand, loves Tracy, heart and soul, and never wavers at all. This is a formula for disaster and the danger of the situation hangs over the story from the outset.

This might be one of the bravest books ever written. It should certainly be more widely read. I cannot even imagine the reaction Lillian Smith must have encountered writing this in 1944, because she does not shy away from any of the difficult race issues that plagued this country, even into the 1940s. The world of 1920s Maxwell, Georgia, is not easy for anyone; because while the races are meant to be living apart and segregated, they are in fact so closely tied and dependent upon one another that the division is in fact an illusion that both sides must work hard to maintain. What struck me was that even those white people who had genuine affection for the black people in their lives treated them as if they were children.

This guy was always saying things about a new world where everybody would have food, and a job, where one man would be as good as another, and there’d be no more wars. That sounds good, you said, but you don’t know the South, you don’t understand us. We’d never let the Negro into that world and I’m not so sure you up in Newark would either. We’d never let the Jews in, a Swede from Chicago said, not in my town. We’d never let the Japs and Chinks in somebody from California yelled…

There are parts of this book that made me literally cringe, and moments that made me want to cry. That there is an ironic religious thread that runs parallel to the other events going on in the town is very effective. The same people who attend the revival and profess salvation are involved in some of the most unChristian behavior imaginable. In fact, one girl is told, almost jokingly,

”What they want you to do, my dear, is sponsor religion, not practice it. Don’t let your conscience mix you up. If you practiced the teachings of that man Jesus here in Maxwell, we’d think you were crazy--or communist.

And yet, this is a population that would have identified almost exclusively as Christian and who would have even used that belief as a justification for their abominable behavior.

One of the black characters makes an amazingly poignant statement while in conversation with a good and responsible white man:

Respectable white folks don’t like to get mixed up in things like this. No. And respectable colored folks don’t either. So we shut our eyes, you shut your eyes, I shut my eyes and--

And, therein lies the truth. These are two of the good people, but they feel unable to stand together, even though they know they should. In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” But the saddest thought is that there are so few good men who even want to change this corrupt system.

The title of the book is no doubt taken from a song that was released in 1939 by Billie Holiday.
If you are not familiar with it, and you are feeling strong enough to do so, listen to Nina Simone’s recording of the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnuEMdUUrZQ&start_radio=1&list=RDBnuEMdU...

A very special thank you to my GR friend, Candi, who made this read possible for me. ( )

Published in 1944, this novel is set sometime after the end of WWI, in a small town in Georgia. As the title suggests, racial tensions are its principal theme, and no happy ending should be expected. It is a remarkable book, more for its nuanced exploration of individuals and their relationships than for any sensational effect the too familiar events related in it might have. I suspect in 1944, however, that might not have been the case. Not surprisingly, the book was banned in Boston and other places, and was even forbidden to be mailed through the U.S. Post Office until Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded her husband to lift that ban. The tale of inter-racial love between an educated black woman and a white man was incendiary then, and although that relationship precipitates much of the action, it strikes me that it is merely a catalyst, and not where the reader should focus. I had minimal sympathy for Nonnie, who despite her Spelman education (gained, we understand, through heavy sacrifices of her parents, who managed to send all three of their children to college) has chosen to return to Maxwell, Georgia, and life as a nanny for a disabled white child, apparently so that she can remain near Tracy Deen, a privileged young man with no gumption, no ability to think for himself, and nothing to offer her but stolen moments in an abandoned house or behind the arbor. The two have a long history, as Tracy saved Nonnie from an assault by another white boy when she was just a child; the other boy immediately backed off, stating “I didn’t know she was yourn”, which Tracy hotly denied, asserting “She’s not that kind”. That one instinctively decent act shows us Tracy’s potential, but it is never realized as he grows into a shiftless, wishy-washy ne'er-do-well who can think of nothing better to do years later when Nonnie inevitably becomes pregnant with his child, than to pay an equally worthless black man to marry her, while he gives an engagement ring to the girl his family has long expected him to marry. The tragedy that ensues from all of this isn’t hard to imagine, but it’s the side and back stories of the various people involved that make the novel worth reading. There are vague hints at incest, and unrecognized homosexual longings. There are men struggling to do the right thing, women desperately trying to keep their children alive and out of trouble, and "good Christians" placing all the blame for society's ills on Satan. It’s a multi-faceted look at human nature in difficult times, and we don’t come off well at all.

Lillian Smith was a crusader for change in her native South, supporting the civil rights movement, running a progressive camp for girls, and publishing a liberal magazine with her significant other, Paula Snelling. Although many people assumed the title of the novel was taken from the song of the same name by Lewis Allan (Abel Meeropol)--an assumption backed by Billie Holiday’s assertion in her autobiography---Smith stated that “strange fruit” referred to the "damaged, twisted people (both black and white) who are the products or results of our racist culture.” In either case, the wrenching lyrics of the song are absolutely appropriate to the book.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Strange Fruit lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc ( )

When marriage between races was uncommon, even illegal in some states, this book was a shocker for some. It is now a classic. 2012 ...I have recently reread this book and found it to be very different from what I had remembered. I was much younger when I read it and segregation was still the law many places. I remembered it as a frustrated rather idyllic romance between a beautiful black girl and a socially well placed white boy. Rereading it I discovered these characters were really not important and neither very romantic. In fact the story was about the town, the two parts oft the town and the effect of race on the entire community.Smith is very much in the company of southern women writers like Flannery O'Conner, ( )

774. Strange Fruit A Novel by Lillian Smith (read 28 June 1964) I was totally in harmony with the views expressed in this book. ( )