Strange Fruit

Rating:
Summary: Incredible! A definite winner!
Review: I don't think I've ever read a book as complete in so many different ways as this one. It had a lot of intelligent insight about people and society, it made my cry, it made me laugh, it made me swoon at the love story, the language was beautiful, and half way through the story, the suspense got really exciting. I can't think what more I could ever ask for in a book. This book is about race relations in the early 20th century South, but it's also about so much more than that. It's about the need we all have to find our place in this world and to be accepted and loved. This book is for anyone who's ever felt like an outcast in society. It's also for anyone who's ever really loved anyone, whether it was a family member or a romantic love, and whether they received love back in return or not.

Rating:
Summary: White people talking to white people about race
Review: It is ironic that 60 years following Lillian Smith's Strange Fruit, we have a Dr. Dean who says he is "talking to white people about race." This is the story of a lynching. An event that was as real as the morning paper in the 1920s and 1930s when the White Citizens' Council was the dominant political party in the South. Told from the perspective of white civil rights activist, Lillian Smith, Strange Fruit is as applicable today as it was when first published in 1944. One need only look to the daily media trappings of the Kobe Bryant v. Colorado case to see the makings of a public lynching in the global village not so unlike that of Maxwell, Georgia in the 1920s.

Rating:
Summary: Strange Fruit is strange indeed
Review: Unfortunately, I picked this book up by accident in the library. I can accept that Smith is a product of her time, but the content of this book is based on romantic myths about black culture. Of course Nonnie is happy she is having this white man's child, in the white male hierearchal system that we live in it is romanticized that all black women, and black people in general, want to claim what is white. This story is about Nonnie and how horribly mixed up she is. Why on earth would she return to Maxwell to chase after someone else's child when she has a college degree? She does have other options. I am sorry, but this book is sub-par at best.