Strange Fruit and Animal Farm

It’s amazing how art appears to imitate life, telling a truth in a fashion that’s both honest and fascinating.

- by Lorraine Lavender-Sams

It’s difficult to overlook the fantasies that often shield us from the painful truths of human frailty... the failure, repugnance, covetousness, apathy, insensitive, malfeasance, ignorance, malice, and all the other negative attributes that inhabit the human spirit, contributing to the potential downfall of humanity.

What seems even more egregious is the inability or the unwillingness of human beings to grasp the sadistic nature of these negative, oppressive traits, if continued, to perpetuate and heighten the deficiencies in our society, be it spiritual or secular.

Our selections for this week are “Strange Fruit” by Lillian Smith and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell.

In Smith’s novel “Strange Fruit” the central narrative revolves around the forbidden interracial relationship between a Caucasian man, Tracy Deen, and Nonnie Anderson, a Black woman who becomes pregnant in the 1920s in a segregated fictional town in Georgia.