Seedfolks

Paul Fleischman’s multi-perspective young adult novella Seedfolks presents a modern parable for community-building over 13 chapters, each narrated by a different character in monologue. Fleischman first published the work in 1997; the 2002 HarperCollins edition, which this study guide references, includes the author’s note “From seeds to Seedfolks.”

Son of children’s book writer Sid Fleischman, Paul Fleischman began his career as a writer in college. Inspired by folklore, music, and verse, Fleischman soon found success writing stories in multiple perspectives, a technique that became a hallmark of his style through works such as his Scott O’Dell Award-winning historical fiction novel Bull Run, his collage-inspired work Seek, his play Zap, and a collection of Cinderella-inspired stories, Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal.

Fleischman’s accolades include a 1983 Newberry Honor Award for Graven Images, the 1989 Newberry Medal Award for his work Joyful Noise: A Poem for Two Voices, and the 2002 California Young Reader Medal for Weslandia. Fleischman often writes on themes related to history, imagination, and community. Centered around themes of community, immigration, and embracing diverse perspectives, Seedfolks was listed with honor on the 1998 Best Books for Young Adults and received the 1999 Buckeye Children’s Book Award as well as the 2008 Special Book Award of China. Seedfolks has since been adapted into a play.

Content Warning: The source material touches on the topics of unhoused people, domestic violence, alcohol/substance abuse, gun violence, racialized harassment, the Holocaust, teen pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and suicidal ideation. The source material also uses both outdated and offensive words to describe various ethnic and racial groups and to depict racist harassment.

Plot Summary

When nine-year-old Kim plants six lima beans on a cold April morning in the trashed lot on Gibb Street, she hopes to honor and connect with her deceased father whom she never met, a farmer the family left behind in Vietnam when they moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Ana, a widow who has lived on Gibb Street since 1919 when her Romanian parents first moved into the apartment, spies Kim out the window and assumes she is burying a gun or drugs. Ana’s experience as a typist for the parole board and long history of living in the ever-changing but always working-class immigrant neighborhood have left her cynical. One day, she decides to solve the mystery by digging up whatever Kim buried. She digs up several beans before she realizes what she has done and hastily reburies them.

By late May, the weather has become hot. Wendell, a school janitor who lost his son to the gun violence common in the neighborhood and his wife to a car accident, gets a frantic call from Ana. She orders him to look at the lot, where he spies some withered bean plants. Ana recruits him to water them, as she feels responsible for saving them but cannot get out there on her newly twisted ankle. Wendell is amazed at the ability of the beans to grow in such a harsh environment, and he mounds the earth around each plant to hold the water just as Kim arrives. Wendell leaves her to her gardening but returns to make a plot of his own in the trash-covered lot.

Soon 12-year-old Gonzalo arrives at the lot with his great uncle, Tίo Juan. Both are Guatemalan immigrants. Gonzalo can speak English and Spanish, but Tίo Juan is from an Indigenous community and does not speak either. Tίo Juan was a farmer in Guatemala, and when he sees Kim and Wendell tending their gardens, he is determined to join them. As Gonzalo watches Tίo Juan expertly plant the seeds along the plots they cleared of garbage, he realizes that the garden has given Tίo Juan a way to share his wisdom and skills without words.

Though Leona sees the gardeners daily as she passes the lot, she knows more people would get involved if only the lot were clean. The piles of garbage on the impromptu dump are more than the community can clear on its own, so Leona uses her advocacy skills to get the city to clear the trash. This emboldens retired activist Sam to get involved; he spreads the word that land is available for anyone who wants to garden, seeing in it a potential paradise. He even sets up a contest for children to figure out how to solve the challenge of watering the garden without hoses and spigots.

As others join, they initially set up plots near those most like them, but their vines and shared problems ultimately send them to seek help from diverse fellow gardeners. Virgil and his father plant lettuce despite the hot weather, dreaming of getting rich selling baby lettuce to fancy restaurants. Lonely Sae Young, whose husband died unexpectedly before they could have children, arrives next and plants hot peppers like she did as a girl in Korea; the garden helps her reconnect to people, feel safe, and recover from the trauma of a violent robbery she survived. Curtis returns to the neighborhood after a few years away. Older, less vain, and wiser, he is ready to win back his first love, Lateesha, by growing her favorite beefsteak tomatoes. To safeguard his crops, he enlists and supports the teenage runaway Royce. British caretaker Nora brings Mr. Myles, who has experienced two strokes, into the garden and builds him a raised bed for flowers. He tends and cares for these with joy, slowly regaining a spark of life as his flowers and friendships with the other growers bloom.

Even sad and world-worn Maricela, a pregnant teen wishing she would die or miscarry, finds hope in the garden she began tending only because her caseworker, Penny, made her. Maricela is not sure the garden is for her until Leona offers her some goldenrod for tea and a non-judgmental listening ear. Leona helps her see that like the garden, Maricela and her unborn child are a part of the natural world.

Amir also finds hope in the garden. An Indian immigrant, Amir feels estranged from those in Cleveland. He is used to large cities and bustling traffic, but unlike the people in India, the people in Cleveland keep to themselves. In the garden, though, people mingle and talk, asking for advice and sharing their vegetables. Amir believes the garden teaches people to know one another more deeply. At a fall matanza, the gardeners share their bounty and mingle, united by the shared purpose and the knowledge that has allowed both the garden and community to grow.

Florence, whose arthritis prevented her from doing anything but observing the garden’s growth on her walks over the summer, watches its decline sadly through the first winter. The abandoned stalks of brown corn and twisted vines do little to brighten the bleak Midwestern winter, and she reflects fondly on those first few “seedfolks.” Like her own family, formerly enslaved people who left the south and settled in Gunnison, Colorado, these seedfolks started something important and life-affirming. When she sees Kim planting beans early the next April, Florence knows the garden, like the community that created it, will stand the test of time.