Within the Branches: An Exploration of The Trees

Our podcast, “Within the Branches: An Exploration of The Trees,” discusses Percival Everetts Booker Prize nominated novel, The Trees. For our podcast cover, we chose the cover of the hit single “Strange Fruit,” by Billie Holiday. The first four lines of this song are:  
“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.” 
This song represents the many lynchings throughout the USA at the time this song was produced (1939). This novel handles the harsh topic of the lynchings of innocent people, mostly focusing on the south. A case primarily discussed in The Trees was the lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. Emmett Till was a young African- American boy accused of catcalling a white female grocery store worker, Carolyn Bryant, in Money, Mississippi. After this incident, Till was brutally murdered and lynched because of this accusation. Emmett Till’s murder has gone down in history as one of the most infamous lynchings in history, though it was only one of over 4,700 lynchings in the United States alone between the years of 1882 and 1968. The Trees is both incredibly emotional and dark, while also incorporating the aspect of humor at the same time. We go further into depth about all of these topics in our podcast. Thank you for listening and enjoy! 
 

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