Strange Fruit (1944) by Lillian Smith

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Strange Fruit (1944)

by Lillian Smith

Clayton, Georgia

Georgia: 22/24

   Lillian Smith was an interesting lady, and 100% the type of author I like to learn about through projects like 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  Smith was a southerner who stayed, a liberal and a closeted lesbian.  She was better known as a writer of non-fiction and someone who was focused on social issues, but Strange Fruit about a doomed (is there any other kind?) interracial relationship in the South, was a best-seller at the time.   Seems like this book, like other works of Southern literature from this time period, have suffered from its frequent use of the n-word.   Tracy Deen, the white male protagonist, belongs to the suffering white scion department- a man-child who can't break away from his family, come terms with its legacy or generally do anything.   It's a character type that I associate with Percy Walker's The Moviegoer, call him the southern proto existentialist. 

   Tracy doesn't get up too much of anything, except boning Nonnie, an African American woman from a high-achieving local black family who has been to college and returned with the goal of living down to her family history.   Despite being a college graduate, she is excited about her unexpected pregnancy.  On almost every page, I expected Nonnie to have more insight into her situation, but alas.  Nonnie's book length fantasy about quietly having her mixed-race child and having her white partner stand by her and acknowledging the birth is more fantastical than if the characters had flown to the moon together.  Surely, surely this woman was aware of the tragedy she would provoke.  No, she is not.