Strange Fruit

by Lillian E. Smith

When it was first published in 1944, this novel sparked immediate controversy and became a huge bestseller. It captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit southern town. The book is as engrossing and incendiary now as the day it was written.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Race, Music, African American, Historical

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Lillian Smith was a writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known best for her best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944). A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions almost guaranteed social ostracism.

Lillian Eugenia Smith was born on December 12, 1897 in the America before women's suffrage to a prominent family in Jasper, Florida, the eighth of ten children. Her life as the daughter of a middle class civic and business leader took an abrupt turn in 1915 when her father lost his turpentine mills. The family was not without resources however, and decided to relocate to their summer residence in the mountains of Clayton, Georgia, where her father had previously purchased property and operated the Laurel Falls Camp for Girls.

Now a young adult financially on her own, she was free to pursue her love of music and teaching for the next five years. She spent a year studying at Piedmont College in Demorest (1915–1916). She also had two stints at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore in 1917 and 1919. She returned home and helped her parents manage a hotel and taught in two mountain schools before accepting a position to be director of music at a Methodist school for girls in Huzhou, (now Wuxing, Zhejiang), China. While she was not a churchgoer and did not consider herself religious, it follows that her youthful Christian principals were challenged by the oppression and injustice she would witness there, and that this laid the foundation of her later awareness as a social critic.

Her time in China was limited however by problems back home. Her father's health was declining and she was forced to return home to the States in 1925. Back in Georgia, she assumed the role of heading the Laurel Falls Camp, a position she would hold for the next twenty three years (1925–1948). Laurel Falls Camp soon became very popular as innovative educational institution known for its instruction in the arts, music, drama, and modern psychology. Her father died in 1930, and she was left with responsibility for the family business and the care of her ill mother. It was this period of creative control over the camp, her ability to use it as a place to discuss modern social issues, combined with the pressures of caring for her ailing parents that made her turn to writing as an emotional escape.

Lillian Smith soon formed a lifelong relationship with one of the camp's school counselors, Paula Snelling, of Pinehurst, Georgia, and the two began publishing a small, quarterly literary magazine, Pseudopodia, in 1936. The magazine encouraged writers, black or white, to offer honest assessments of modern southern life, to challenge for social and economic reform, and it criticized those who ignored the Old South's poverty and injustices. It quickly gained regional fame as a forum for liberal thought, undergoing two name changes to reflect its expanding scope. In 1937 it became the North Georgia Review, and in 1942 finally settling with South Today.

In 1949, she kept up her personal assault on racism with Killers of the Dream, a collection of essays that attempted to identify, challenge and dismantle the Old South's racist traditions, customs and beliefs, warning that segregation corrupted the soul. She also emphasized the negative implications on the minds of women and children. Written in a confessional and autobiographical style that was highly critical of southern moderates, it met with something of a cruel silence from book critics and the literary community.

In 1955, the civil rights movement grabbed the entire nation's attention with the Montgomery bus boycott. By this time she had been meeting or corresponding with many southern blacks and liberal whites for years and was well aware of blacks concerns. In response to Brown v. Board of Ed

Reviews

[Candi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"She stood at the gate, waiting; behind her the swamp, in front of her Colored Town, beyond it, all Maxwell. Tall and slim and white in the dusk, the girl stood there, hands on the picket gate."

Nonnie Anderson, a beautiful, college-educated, light-skinned, young black woman stands waiting for her lover, Tracy Deen, the son of a distinguished white doctor. Set in Maxwell, Georgia, during the early 1920s, this is quite simply a recipe for disaster. I knew instantly this would be anything but a simple read, however; and I was right. This novel, published in 1944, offers a profound and intricate examination of race relations in the south. Why have I never heard of Strange Fruit or author Lillian E. Smith before?! Everyone should be reading this one! A book like this is just as relevant now as it was seventy-four years ago when it was a bestseller.

There are a number of characters in this short novel, and the reader is privy to the most intimate and complex thoughts of many of them – black and white, man and woman. I can think of no other book I have read that penetrates into such depths of the mind when it comes to thoughts on race. Although I did not agree with most of them (in fact was quite angered by the majority), I grasped where these ideas derived and how they remained embedded within the psyche of these characters. Lillian Smith was brilliant and perceptive. The plot occurs during a week when a revivalist meeting has set up camp in Maxwell, with Brother Dunwoodie the prominent and influential preacher who will leave an indelible mark on this small town. It shows how blind devotion and religious fervor can cause devastating effects on a community. "Across White Town came the scream of Brother Dunwoodie’s voice, calling white folks to God. Like calling hogs. Hogs so fat from devouring their black fellows they’d lumpishly rush into the sea and be drowned rather than heed the warning."

The author demonstrates through her characters and their actions how white supremacy is upheld by ignorant prejudice, the unjustified need for man to uplift himself by ruling over those he considers weaker and at a disadvantage. As one character states: "Everybody is gouging his living out of somebody beneath him – singing hymns as he gouges…" The system is also perpetuated by those who turn a blind eye to the problem. Sam Perry is Maxwell’s black doctor. Not only does he treat those blacks needing medical attention, he is also the solid rock that most of the black citizens lean on for support, particularly the Anderson family – Nonnie and sister Bess and brother Ed. When grieving over a tragic event in the community, Sam says to his white friend, Tom Harris: "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…" Lillian Smith points out a crucial fact – it is the responsibility of everyone to stamp out racism and hatred.

Strange Fruit is not an easy book to find. Nor is it an easy book to read. It will make you angry and it will break your heart. But it will also enlighten you, move you, and will force you to probe your own beliefs and your responsibility towards righting a wrong. Highly recommended.

"White man, brown man, stared across the shadows of the room, across three centuries of the same old shadow."

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me mad, made me cry, and made me think. It is a much more powerful depiction of race relations in a small, sleepy southern town than "To Kill a Mockingbird". That book was written from a child's point of view. "Strange Fruit" gives us the facts as seen through the eyes of many people in Maxwell, Georgia in the early 1920's. Black and white, man and woman, parent and child; by the last page we know them all, we understand what motivates them, and it makes us sick.
The bare facts are these. The son of the town's white doctor (Tracy) has been carrying on with a beautiful, college educated, very light skinned black woman (Nonnie). She loves him completely, is available whenever he wants, and eventually gets pregnant by him. His parents want him to settle down with the good Christian daughter of a neighbor, get religion, and make something of himself.
The story takes place in an insufferably hot week in August during a tent revival. Reverend Dunwoodie gets his claws into Tracy and sets off a series of events that culminates in tragedy for a great many people. End of synopsis.
Lillian Smith used this story to illustrate the ignorant, wrong thinking ways of white people using God to justify their cruelty and injustice to a race of people they considered below them, not even willing to dignify them with feelings and emotions common to us all. The blacks used good manners to whites, humbling themselves and saying what had to be said to keep the status quo. As one character said, whites are as much prisoners of the whole system of Jim Crow as the Negroes, and if they spent the same amount of time and energy getting along as in keeping them in their place, just think what a great place the South could be.
The dialect was perfect, the plot was engrossing and suspenseful, the characters were real people with real problems, and we knew what made them tick. It's not an easy book to read, but it needs to be read. One reviewer suggested it be taught in schools instead of "To Kill a Mockingbird." That could not happen today because of the frequent use of the N word, and the way the author shows the utter hypocrisy of the church and "good Christian people". Ironically, it was a brave book to write and to publish in 1944, and was in fact banned in some places, enabling it to become a best seller. I recommend it to anyone who cares to challenge ways of thinking. It's going on my "best books of 2016 list."

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

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=BnuEM...

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

[Tara Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another banned book and it's astonishing that it was written in 1944. From what I've read it was even barred from being sent thru the postal service. I can only imagine the effect that it had in this period of time. Many good reviews have been posted, so I'll just highly recommend this fine novel which remains very relevant today.

[Majenta · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It just bein' BLACK!"--Dessie

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am amazed at how this book, a bestseller in 1944, dropped off the map. It was by a white Southern lady...her debut novel in fact...so it was, I suppose, inevitable that its focus was more on white folks than black folks. But, and this is key to me, it focuses on racism's viciousness and vileness via the white racists. It's not shirking responsibility for the sexual exploitation of black women by white men, or the way the white-dominated economy causes black families to endure almost intolerable levels of pressure to abandon their own in order to care for and serve ours. It's very clearly putting responsibility for a lynching onto the evils of racism. That there was a white man murdered was reason enough to commit the crime of lynching. The guilt or innocence of the lynched man was always secondary.

Equally it's not clear that the central event of the novel is portrayed in a pure way. It's morally ambiguous. In many ways, the title of the book and Billie Holiday's rendition of the haunting, terrifying song, is linked to the racist white world *more* than the black world that its victims come from. Racism isn't a black problem, it's a problem for black people; racism is a white person's invention and our collective responsibility to render unacceptable. Its perpetuation requires selective blindness, as blaming the Other is a handy way to avoid looking in the mirror for the source of the infection.

So Lillian E. Smith was really the right person to write a book that attacks racism's root cause: White, and white male, privilege. That she wrote about the black people of Georgia in less-than-modern terms is unsurprising, as is her treatment of women as less powerful actors in their own lives. It was 1944. The right to vote was 20 years old. Things have changed and thank goodness for it. But Lillian Smith's very good novel shouldn't be allowed to languish because it's of its time.

I recommend hunting a copy up. It is a good yarn, well told, and proof that the segregated South of the Jim Crow era was not a monolithic, unquestioned social juggernaut. Smith didn't spring from nowhere. Her life is proof that there were always people of conscience willing to call their privileged system into question. Forcefully, loudly, and often.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Nonnie was only a name today. A name and an obstacle. A colored girl blocking a white path.”

What an eye-opener. Most of us are aware of the racism and the horrific crimes stemming from it that Lillian Smith explores in this novel. But what is so unique, so revealing, is the way, through a sometimes unsettling writing technique involving frequent shifts in point-of-view, she shows us what may have created the behavior we look back and abhor, why it went on so long, and consequently, maybe why so much of it is still going on.

She shows us how racist attitudes were promoted, prolonged, and carried forward by families and churches using twisted interpretations of spiritual and familial duty through a vile form of mind control that’s still alive today.

“… but eyes were hard and hating as they hunted a black victim to sacrifice to an unknown god of whom they were sore afraid.”

Smith wraps all this in a gripping story--a story about the town of Maxwell Georgia, and all the different people in it, Black and White. It’s the 1920’s. Among others, we see a boy--lovingly raised by one Black servant and best friends with another, repeatedly told he must keep Black people in a place lower than his own, confused by his time in war, manipulated by his church leaders, suffocated by his mother. We see a girl, raised to be aware of how to survive amongst White people--not to be, not to do, not to disturb, always to fear; but at the same time encouraged to strive, to believe, to hope for better. How in the world do you hold both of those sides in your mind at the same time?

Using what I saw as amazing insight and writing skill, Smith shows us what the people of Maxwell were thinking and maybe even why. Why they carried on the racism. Why they put up with it--how both sides of this racial divide felt they’d been backed into a corner to carry it on and put up with it.

Lillian Smith was a White woman from a prominent southern family. You can tell when reading this that she knows. She’s heard these voices, heard these conversations. She was in a unique position to bring it to light, to speak the truth. And amazingly, in 1944, she did just that.

Reading this made me think: each of us has things we know, things that we understand but that are often unspoken. Maybe it’s our duty to speak them, to write them, to tell the truths we know. It’s a brave thing Smith did writing this, but it makes you wonder--what could happen if we were all that brave?

“In cabin and big kitchen through the hot hours, as irons thumped, thumped, fluting dainty ruffles, and oven doors creaked open and shut for bread to be lifted in and out, voices were whispering, ‘Lawd Jesus … Lawd … Gawd have mercy … Gawd Jesus help us …’”

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one took me some time to get through, not because it wasn't well written but because the subject matter was heavy. It left me feeling drained after each reading. Amazed that Smith wrote this in 1944 with such accuracy. A novelist and activist for civil rights way before her time. Well done, Lillian Smith. I can't imagine the gut wrenching she experienced writing this novel. I know as a reader I experienced this feeling from beginning to end. Friends, mark this one for posterity.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is perhaps an important book (to satisfy curiosity), but it is also a tragic and depressing story. It represents the Black experience of the South during the 1920's with all the complications. The style is ultra-realism and could be expressing many truths were it not for the absolute lack of humor or lighter moments. I felt the characters remained a little two dimensional throughout.---In my version of reality, any race or group of people fighting constant adversity would naturally use even just tiny amounts of humor as a buffer or as a symbol of rebellion. And I don't mean to make a sad story palatable, but to be human enough to be credible. A couple of other books that deliver powerful stories but suffer from the same omission (in my opinion) would be Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) or The Street by Ann Petry (1946). All as I say, important books for the curious.

[Dawnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have the 1944 Edition. This is a book everyone should read.

[Theophilus (Theo) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not "Roots". Interracial love in Georgia immediately after World War I was not a topic many writers chose to write about in 1944. Lillian Smith goes after racism and classism with guns blazing (metaphorically speaking). A young white veteran returns from the war and "takes up" with a light-skinned African American woman. Things get really complicated when she becomes pregnant. His parents want him to "grow up", join the church and marry the white girl they have picked out for him. He agrees and offers his black paramour money for an abortion or as a dowry to marry a black man. She refuses and things get worse, resulting in a murder. Very good mental imagery and mood throughout. Hard to find but worth the hunt.

[Camie · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Tracy the son of the prominent white Doctor in Georgia falls for Nonnie, the beautiful and educated daughter of the most " upright" black family in town in 1920 and she becomes pregnant disastrous and heartbreaking events follow in the community.
It was brave of Lillian Smith to tackle the subject of racial conflict when this book was written in 1944 and titled after a song by Billie Holiday which had lyrics about a lynching.
It's a very tough emotional read as incendiary and relevant today as it was then and which I actually skipped the first time around a few years back, but read this time for On the Southern Literary Trail Bookclub 09/2018 4 stars

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book when I ordered another book by the same name through inter-library loan [[book:Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate|3496693] by Kenan Malik] and this came instead. It was, to say the least, a fortuitous mistake. I want to say we should shelve To Kill a Mockingbird and teach this instead. Like Harper Lee, Lillian Smith was a white southern woman who grew up observing the atrocities of the Jim Crow south. Unlike Harper Lee, she was worldly and political.

To Kill A Mockingbird tells a tragic story and bears an important message about the evil of legally and culturally-sanctioned racism. But it lies, also. Most towns didn't have an Atticus Finch. When mobs showed up at the jailhouse to lynch a prisoner, there usually wasn't a precocious child to step in and shame a man in front of a crowd and halt a murder.

The Maxwell, Georgia of Strange Fruit doesn't have a Finch family among its white population. Tom Harris is the closest that they have, and though he'll step in to stop a lynching, he'll shrug his shoulders and soldier on if he fails. Vulnerable black children and women are left the prey of white teenagers and men seeking sexual satisfaction and dominance, and their wives and mothers, clergy and law enforcement bemoan it and look the other way, as though speaking about it were the worse sin. Maxwell's white residents, poor and uneducated for the most part, hold steadfast to their particular supremacist view of both Christianity and American history.

At the center of this story are the Andersons, an educated black family, who for all of their college degrees, work the only jobs they can find in Maxwell - as servants. Ed Anderson has moved on to bigger and better things in Washington and now works for the government, but Bess and Nonnie are still at home in Maxwell, Bess as a cook and Nonnie as a nanny. Ed is in town for a visit and having trouble adjusting to life in the south again, anxious and angry. His eyes have been opened in Washington to the injustice he and his family were dealt in Maxwell, and he's desperately trying to get Bess and Nonnie out. Bess is smart, careful and nervous, and Nonnie is beautiful and otherworldly, and men can't help looking at her - which is where the trouble starts. She's two months pregnant with the child of the son of the town's white doctor, and he's all but engaged to another girl. Brother Dunwoodie has just arrived in town to bring Maxwell's souls to Jesus with a revival and it is damned hot outside. . .

I can't recommend this book enough - to anyone and everyone. For a portrait of the Jim Crow South and a good description of the troubles that faced African Americans fleeing it with the first waves of the great migration. 10 stars. You'll never look at To Kill A Mockingbird the same again.

[Celia · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Wikipedia:

Strange Fruit is a 1944 bestselling novel debut by American author Lillian Smith that deals with the then-forbidden and controversial theme of interracial romance. Originally given the working title Jordan is so Chilly, Smith later changed the title to Strange Fruit prior to its publication. In her autobiography, singer Billie Holiday wrote that Smith chose to name the book after her song "Strange Fruit", which was about the lynching and racism against African-Americans. Smith maintained the book's title referred to the "damaged, twisted people (both black and white) who are the products or results of our racist culture.

Strange Fruit takes place in a Georgia town in the 1920s and focuses on the relationship between Tracy Deen, son of some prominent white townspeople, and Nonnie Anderson, a beautiful and intelligent young black woman whom he once rescued from attacking white boys.

So much happens in this story, hardly anything of it good. The blacks are subservient; the whites are hypocritical and even when kind demean the blacks. Deaths occur. One is a lynching.

This book tore at my soul. First, it was abominable that Christian people could be so cruel. The very ones that lynched a black had just before been at a revival and pledged their lives to God. Second, it scares me to think how I would have acted if I lived in this Georgia town in 1924. Would be I be as hypocritical and rationalize actions as did the other whites?

This book will stay with me for a LONG time.

4 stars

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: slurs

There was a guy from Newark, though, who talked ideas. He thought the war was about democracy. Said he was fighting for that. Most thought he was nuts. Even after the armistice he kept talking. During the peace conference, when any fool could see what was happening, he said Wilson could still do it, if the people would stand by him. 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 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....And there was such an argument that nobody could remember heads or tails of it, everybody got mad, and one big fat slob kept pounding the table and cursing the Bolsheviks. And well, after a while the talk shifted back to women and things eased down a little.

Poor old harmless Carl, she tried to say, as she had said and heard others say a thousand times; but she knew suddenly that the devil as well as God uses fools.

It's hard to tell, but I knocked off a half star for Smith succumbing to the eugenicist bedtime story that bigotry can be solved by simply wiping disabled/neuroatypical folk of the face of the earth. Otherwise, I'm glad I gave this one a chance despite my longtime ban on on reading books about non-white people that were (supposedly) composed by white people. I've come to the stage where I'm comfortable with making some exceptions in part because of this book, picked entirely for the sake of a reading women challenge, and save for a few caveats, went as well as it did. Still, had I permitted myself to read it sooner, I may not have had as good a critical handle on it as I do now. I also may not have been as persistent in tracking down black literature as I have been the last few years, and instead settled for the likes of Welty or Wolfe. Thus, I recommend this book to those who respect the fact that the right to read it aloud is demographically confined, as it would not do well to sideline the progress Smith envisioned while writing this by insisting on a bad faith sticking to the letter of the law rather than the spirit.

Trouble about going to white folks, they always think you're exaggerating.

And Dessie began to see that sometimes folks line up by color and sometimes they line up by other things—like sins, and who is good to them, and where they work.

You could hear the soft weeping of women who would face the Judgment Bar of Heaven with their men's unknown sins more willingly than they would face the knowledge here on earth of what those sins might be.

Smith writes in a way I hadn't encountered in a while, or perhaps hadn't encountered in such a believable, largely heartrending sense. Many authors try to get under the skin of myriad characters, and in the modern day, few succeed as well as, say, Adichie, or others whose names I can't recall. This means, at times, the narrative is pitifully pathetic, and disgustingly disappointing, and abjectly horrifying, and that's important, as even the most compassionate white person is shown to be useless in the face of the antiblackness that they themselves let ride in the streets. This means that the average white person may see themselves in this book and devolve into self-congratulation, only to see themselves castigated in the next page by a rendering of the interiority of the supposed white savior. It's unfortunately a book that missed its time to be a revelatory motion picture, but looking around the modern day, I feel this book would've done more in the long run than the much lauded, also white authored To Kill a Mockingbird, which may be more palatable than Smith's but only when ignoring the context of 'Go Set a Watchman' and co. All in all, this work was a reminder of literature is capable of when it comes to getting down in the real dirt to show real portraits of real communities. It's a crying shame that the ban on this book was adhered to more religiously than others have been once it came off the bestseller lists, as if one had to pick a white person to talk about black issues, I'd put my money on Smith.

But you don't hurry a white man. No, you sit and wait, hat in hand, and watch the clock over the pay window tick away minute after minute after minute of a black man's chance to live, knowing it has ticked away with it your right to decency.

Scared. Everybody's scared. Something bad is happening, and they are not going to be left behind for it to happen to while white folks bury their dead.

My mood's been taking some heavy blows of late, and I"m hoping getting myself out of the house in ways not simply devoted to making money will give me the fortitude to sail past the rough patches and recognize the fact that situations like these are exactly why I've saved up as much as I've had. My position's a way's away from all those in Maxwell, Georgia in the early 20th century, and if anyone from that era saw me or the people I interact with, they'd likely all be, white and black, be baffled, scared, scandalized, much as how I view most of them, although I'm more depressed and momentarily susceptible to the myth of time passing = progress than anything else. One thing I recognize, though, is the need to get out, the need to unionize, the need to not stick myself down and make myself a target until it's too late to move save to vent forth whatever harm I've received on those weaker than myself. It's as much a vindictive self-solipsism in California as it is in the South, and it is not ridding the world of neuroatypicals such as me that will solve it, but to look out for lives that subsist under a boot to the face, and to remove the boot and lift the face up to the sun. Off topic, I suppose, but that's the lens through which I read this cry from the past, and I can only hope others delve into this and get some of catharsis, untouched by a white savior complex.

"Right now, I have some ideas," Charlie said slowly. "If I say here twenty years, I won't have them.["]

The moon was rising now behind the dark row of tall old trees, it would soon disclose the body as clearly as would daylight. She made herself stop staring at the trees, made herself stop wanting to go there, as she felt compelled now to do, to see this thing close, this trouble that had been in their lives so long with no naming of it by anyone. It was as if something had prowled through the woods close to you ever since you could remember, sometimes just cracking a twig, sometimes crashing hard against a tree, but you had never quite seen it, or been able to name it. And now it lay there before you—dead. Dead. And you wanted, or something deep down in you wanted, to look at it a long time...

[heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. I learned more about a song I was unfamiliar with, a place and time period I didn't know much about, and theories about the performer and performance. I lost interest after awhile b.c I was getting tired of theories.

[kisha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably shouldn't have rated this book because I only read a little pass halfway of this book. I just couldn't get into the language. It was too confusing. I really loved the premise of this story so I was really hoping I'd love it. Many people loved this book so hopefully your experience with this novel will be better than mine was.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book about three weeks ago and I’ve been unable to write a review. From the moment I closed the cover after reading the last page I’ve been stuck. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to say, I do, this book is incredibly moving. My mind runs at light speed and my fingers move at tortoise speed. So I’m lost, plenty to say, but can’t express it in writing. Now it’s time, readable or not, let my rambling begin.

First the author, after reading Strange Fruit I read a few articles about Lillian Smith. She was a remarkable woman. She held strong and rational opinions about racial intolerance. She also had courage enough to express these opinions and ideas to a mostly hostile public. One of the pictures I saw of her shows a white haired elderly woman, with a softly wrinkled face, but her eyes were slightly hard. Her eyes were intelligent but showed a woman who could be at times, quite fierce. She reminded me of my grandmother, both were true southern Steel Magnolias. They were ninety percent sugar and cinnamon, but when angered, the remaining ten percent would be pure tornado.

Now the book, it’s brilliant! As brilliant as it is, it’s oh so depressing, mostly because even though it’s fiction, everything about it rings true. A young couple is in love, one is white and the other is black. In a town where the separation between white and black is often reinforced with violence, this love is doomed.

The characters Ms. Smith invents are all deeply developed, even minor characters are full and richly complex. The reader can vividly see and hear in each character, their appearance, their personality, their vocal tones, and even their racial attitudes brilliantly become pictures in the readers mind. She is especially insightful and compassionate when describing the turmoil Tracy feels about his love affair with Nonnie and the almost spiritual unconditional love Nonnie feels for Tracy. The resolution for Tracy and Nonnie is indeed tragic and will squeeze your heart. Be forewarned there is death and there is no happy ending for anyone.

If I have any complaint about this book it is that there is no conclusion for most of the characters. This lack of conclusion is part of what makes this book so memorable, you can’t help but wonder, what happens now. Nonnie Anderson, she alone is the character that I felt most drawn to and wanted to know her future. What happens to the woman whose only flaw seems to be that of loving a white man. For me she was pure in spirt and character, and I hate being left wondering.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The premise: Nonnie Anderson is an unusual woman of the 1920s (and still more unusual for a Black woman of the 20s) because of this: she’s college-educated. That’s what it means to be an Anderson: you go to college. You don’t raise your voice. To hurt one of them is to hurt all of them. Kill your snakes.

She lives in the South with her sister Bess's family. She's in love with her childhood friend, Tracy Deen, who is white. Oh, and also this: she's pregnant with Tracy's child. And as she tells Tracy-- she's "glad" about it.

Nonnie herself is a fantastic character--the kind of quiet focus and emotional solidity you don't often see in protagonists. She believes what she believes and she's going to do what she wants, but she's not going to make a thing about it.

Against this solid wall of determination, we have Tracy--a man who really doesn't know what he wants, or what's good for him, or what is involved in ethical human interaction. On the one hand, he loves Nonnie. Has always loved her. They're so deeply integrated into each other's psyches that neither of them can conceive of their own identity in the absence of the other.

On the other hand, he's a white man in the South in the 1920s, and he's been taught certain things.

And he really struggles to reconcile those two realities. If he believes Black people are "other," if he believes they are nothing like him and "his people," if he believes they are inferior to him--how can the person he most admires, the person closest to his own heart, be Black?

So, some days, Nonnie is the girl he loves-- the girl who is the only thing that "gives his life meaning." The thought of her existing in the world was what got him through his service in the first World War.

But sometimes-- usually when she is out of sight, when he's surrounded by his white family and friends-- sometimes, "Nonnie was only a name. A name and an obstacle. A colored girl blocking a white path."

First he tries to rationalize these two opposing feelings by saying Nonnie isn't "really" Black-- she's so light-skinned, he argues to himself, she's practically white! But later, as he feels the pressure on all sides to marry his (white) girlfriend, he decides to rationalize it by relegating Nonnie to the role of the concubine in his mind. He tells himself she doesn't matter. It was just sex.

Look, it's a book about miscegenation in the 1920s. Obviously, this doesn't end well. This relationship, this fetus, is a lit firecracker thrown into the pressure pot of this small, Southern town.

It's an incredible book. It has a powerful message, and it's not quiet about it. Lillian Smith could easily have titled this book This Is Fucked Up because she is screaming that message aloud.

I can't even imagine the impact this would have had when it came out in the 1940s. At the same time, it's not hard to find uncomfortable parallels in modernity.

Oh, also-- there's a minor lesbian character (notably, Smith herself was a lesbian). Smith gives no fucks about avoiding controversy. She's going to do whatever the hell she wants to do, and everyone else can get fucked if they're upset about it. I guess she's a little bit like Nonnie that way.

TL;DR: Lillian Smith is a badass and she nailed it.

[Harriet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, written in the 40's,is a true gauge of how the majority of white southerners thought lynching,servitude, humiliation of freed african-americans was what they had "their God's" right to act upon. Though I haven't heard of a lynching lately a great many of today's white population remains in situ.I reread Strange Fruit this month for the first time in 40 years. Lillian Smith's every word of dialect is so perfect that I can't imagine why I ever thought Faulkner had it right.
This novel of great importance to any student of history has been on my mind day and night since I reread it.Why did it take 40 some years until Freedom Summer came and the Civil Rights issues were brought to the forefront.Ms. Smith's novel of lyrical beauty and violent forces, the white man's savage rape of black women and the traveling revival tents, that were in every small southern town, reinforced the white man's right to entitlement. This book should be on every high schools reading list. What a singular activist Lillian Smith was when she was virtually among a precious few in the wilderness

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written study of racism in all it's various permutations. Though this story is set in a small town in the post-WWI south, it could have happened almost anywhere in America. And though this book was published in the 1940's, the language is so richly evocative and the characters are so deftly drawn that it continues to be a worthwhile read today. Everyone in our book club found Strange Fruit a compelling read (though copies were so hard to come by that we eventually had to share the two copies we could find). This is definitely a recommended book.

[Susan Levenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I pulled this book off my mother's bookshelf after she died, having never heard of it. It turns out to be terrific, an anti-racist novel that was a best-seller when it came out in 1944. Smith, a white southerner, created believable and fascinating characters, avoiding stereotyping on both sides, and drawing me in though I'm not ordinarily a novel-reader. The book is absolutely not dated, and is still in print, though at amazon it's either "(CANCELED)" or "unavailable." You can buy it through Barnes & Noble online, or used.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

(FROM JACKET) When it was first published in 1944, this novel with a curious title-taken from a Billie Holiday song about a lynching-sparked immediate controversy: It horrified some critics, prompted booksellers in Boston and Detroit to ban its sale, caused the U.S. postal service to seize copies, and tempted the public enough to make it the year's No. 1 fiction best-seller

Why such a furor? Most notably, several instances of profanity-and a plot centered around the clandestine love affair between an educated young black woman and the white son of the town's doctor in Georgia of the 1920s. What also disturbed reader sensibilities was how "Strange Fruit" captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit Southern town as well as the hypocrisy, the blind cruelty, and the prejudices of its residents.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant account of life between blacks and whites in a small Georgia town during the 1920's Jim Crow era.

When published in 1944 the topic of a white man impregnating a black woman was considered controversial. Once banned in Boston and Detroit for its lewdness and sexual promiscuity.

Was a favorite of World War II Troops and was requested for inclusion as an Armed Services Edition paperback for distribution to soldiers, sailors, airman, and Marines.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is an interesting story. Difficult to read because the grammar usage is inconsistent in style. Switches back and forth between first person and narrator, past tense to present tense, and incorrect use of pronouns such as "you". I'm guessing it probably got published because of its controversial social statement. I would enjoy reading it again, after some good editing.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not at all what I was expecting. This was truly a "forbidden LOVE" story, but at the same time it was so much more. The story is dark, but beautifully written.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed the 1944 edition of this book after hearing about it in the When Books Went To War book about it's popularity with servicemen in part because of the sex but the taboo of the interracial relationship.

It's a powerful story, with a title taken from popular song that came out several years before it that is set over the course of one week when religion comes to town and readers get a birds-eye view of hypocrisy, racism, forbidden and unbidden romance.

It's a difficult read in 2019 for a few reasons- one is a simplistic one that the writing places it firmly in the past and had me struggling for meaning but the fact that it could still read like a contemporary book with conversations around skin color, subservience, religion, and love amidst family, obligations, and right and wrong. The straight and narrow of the story is that a college-educated light-skinned black woman has been carrying on an affair with the white doctor's son. Clearly his parents want to make sure he marries well and finds faith while Nonnie is left in the dust.

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Every Southerner knows, of course. We lynch the Negro's soul every day of our lives." "Strange Fruit" at page 239.

A tent revival in the fictitious town of Maxwell, Georgia serves as the backdrop for this novel of racial tension and transition in which a white man is shot and an African-American man hung and burned in retaliation. The novel focuses on the relationship between a black woman and a white man at a time during which that type of relationship was not accepted. As the white man seeks acceptance from his family he breaks up the relationship but his attempt to provide for the now-pregnant girl has unforeseen and terrible consequences.

The August heat paired with the cries for salvation from the tent revival set an emotionally charged stage for the story of hate, racial discrimination, and family turmoil. As the son of the towns doctor, Tracy Deen is expected to make something of himself. Instead, he's been ungrounded and has been secretly having an affair with an African-American young woman, Nonnie Anderson. As the novel opens, Nonnie tells Tracy she's pregnant. Tracy, who is torn between his love for Nonnie and his desire to please his family, decides to join the church and propose to Dorothy Pusey, a white girl he's also been dating. In an attempt to take care of Nonnie and her baby, Tracy arranges for Henry McIntosh, a black man who has been a servant to his family, to marry Nonnie.

Trouble begins when Ed Anderson, Nonnie's brother, overhears Henry bragging that Tracy has paid him to marry Nonnie and cover up the illegitimate pregnancy. In his anger Ed, who had come home only to try to convince his college-educated sister Nonnie to move north with him, shoots Tracy. Ed is whisked away to safety in the north but when Tracy's body is found, all of the blacks know that someone will pay.

The novel is set in the Deep South during a time period of great transition following the Civil War. Blacks are being paid for their work and are still considered inferior to white people. Many have moved north hoping for better jobs and better treatment. The void leaves farmers without the free labor they once had for cotton harvest time. Blacks are now in competition with whites for jobs. Common laborers are angry they aren't being paid more and can now be replaced by cheaper black laborers. This anger kindles the hate many whites hold for the blacks.

Bill Talley, a rich farmer who treats his servants hatefully, leads a mob against Henry, who found Tracy's body, even though many know Henry could not have been responsible for the murder. Despite attempts by his friends and family to hide him from the bloodthirsty mob, Henry is found and killed. Reactions from the community range from surprise that some of the same men who sought salvation at the revival altar were responsible for the cruel death of Henry, to anger at the ignorance of the people in the South. The novel ends with a snapshot of Nonnie, her sister Bess and their friend Dessie preparing for and returning to their work as servants to the white people the day after Henry's murder.

This novel has all of the themes and motifs found in excellent Southern literature during the early to mid-20th Century; including terrible racial discrimination, hatred, ignorance, religion/God, family relations, and poverty in a small town setting. Without "Strange Fruit" the other quintessential Southern novel -- "To Kill A Mockingbird" -- could not have been written to such great acceptance and fanfare.

Actually finished this novel yesterday morning but have been somewhat conflicted about this one. This particular 250 page edition was printed in 1944 by Forum Books of the World Publishing Company and had exceptionally small print; possibly because of the limitations imposed on print-making and paper during WWII. Nevertheless, it read like a 750 page tome. At times I found the writing tedious and at other times well-written and well worth the time.

This novel is listed on the New York Public Library's "Books of the Century" -- a list of significant literature written during the 20th Century. I recommend it highly to all of those interested in reading about American life during the early to mid 20th Century, which, sadly, still exists to this day. America simply cannot uphold the moral imperative to the rest of world unless and until we have uprooted and destroyed the seeds of prejudice, racial discrimination and hatred.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Her slow drawn-out sound was the sound of her time: People then took time to listen to a story, and she could tell one. I'm not sure, but I think that the first time I heard Billie Holiday's singing was the first time I realized that a singer could approximate all the bullshit and beauty that goes into a love affair." -(Hilton Als' introduction to the book)

Just picked this book up at Half Price. I'd heard this book mentioned somewhere before, perhaps on NPR, and I like the concept. It's not just a biographical sketch of Holiday, but the biography of a song, the singer's signature song -- one that nearly moves me to tears whenever I read the first two lines and one that breaks my heart when I hear Holiday sing it. Read all of the lyrics of the song, and it's an incredibly gruesome thing, full of blood and rotting corpses and bulging eyeballs plucked by crows. It sounds like it was penned by Edgar Allen Poe rather than being an anthem for racial justice; a plea to the decency of humankind. It's all in how it's handled, how it's felt, and how it's sung. Holiday didn't "write" it, per se, but her voice writes it. It's hard to imagine a lynching better described in so few words. A swinging corpse treated no differently by the forces of nature than the fruit itself.
The moment in 1939 when Holiday sang it was a seminal moment in civil rights. It was an incendiary song. The audience at Cafe Society did not know how to react when such a frank and brutal protest was put forth, no matter how artfully.
The book relates this history; the song's rather checkered history thereafter and Holiday's own sketchy life.
Interestingly, the title of this book was changed from this to "Strange Fruit; Biography of a Song." And I think that's probably for the better.
I just read the first few pages. I like it.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
I'm just over halfway through but am confident enough to issue a final judgment. I'm thinking that even at this short length, this might have best been fodder for a long magazine article rather than a full book. But, in any case, it's the last word on the subject. The song, the artist, the issues and the period interest me greatly. A smoothly written tome that sifts through facts and myths, an interesting "micro history" that looks at the macro via the device of a popular song and its history, and a good pop cultural summer read -- and I would recommend it as such.

Addendum:
Something I failed to mentioned previously is that the book is spiced up with nice oral history segments from various witness and commentators in the civil rights, labor and protest/activist movements, as well as music critics, scholars and performers in various genres of music -- people who either heard Holiday perform the song or simply heard recordings of it and were influenced by it. The very back of the book contains a discography of all known recordings of the song.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about this book while reading a book about the Books soldiers read during WWII. This book was banned in Boston in 1944 and was to be kept from the soldiers fighting the war. Eleanor Roosevelt read it and told Franklin to get it off the banned list and to the troops!! I had to read it and see what it was about.
The title is taken from a Billy Holiday song. The story is set in Georgia after WWI and tells the tale of an interactial relationship and lynching. Lillian Smith enraged readers with her accurate descriptions of racial attitudes in the 1920's in Georgia. There is mild profanity and the young black woman is well educated and a much more sympathetic woman than most of the white women in the story. Everyone suffers in the story and the reader feels compassion for all, even the lynchers. The deeply rooted prejudice seemed to leave no room for mercy or for escape.
The book was the best selling book of 1944 and along with FOREVER AMBER two of the most popular books for the troops during the war. Good for Eleanor Roosevelt for seeing its worth and merit.
By today's standards much of it is very tame as far as language goes. The racial part given our news stories is still with us and that is a tragedy.