Strange Fruit by Lilian Smith

Strange Fruit is a 1944 bestselling debut novel by American author Lillian Smith.

It deals with the then-forbidden and controversial theme of interracial romance. Its working title was Jordan is so Chilly, but Smith retitled it Strange Fruit prior to publication

Initially, the book was met with controversy over its depiction of interracial romance and sex.

It was banned from several locations including the United States Postal Office. Strange Fruit was also banned from being mailed through the U.S. Postal Service until President Franklin D. Roosevelt interceded at his wife Eleanor’s request.

After the book’s release, it was banned in Boston and Detroit for ‘lewdness’ and crude language. Of the book’s banning, Smith commented: ‘These people fear a book like Strange Fruit with a profound dread; and will seize on any pretext, however silly, to keep others and themselves, from having access to it.’

The book sold well and within a few months of its initial publication in February, topped the bestseller list of the New York Times Book Review.

A Georgia newspaper complained that the relationship in the book made ‘courtship between Negroes and whites appear attractive’ and Smith worried that the focus on the romance in the book would detract from its political message.

A reviewer for the Milwaukee Journal claimed the book ‘indicts the thing called ‘white supremacy’ and was a ‘grand opera’.

A 1944 review from The Rotarian praised the novel, calling it ‘absorbingly dramatic’ and citing its realism as a highlight. 

Smith refrained from portraying her protagonist, Nonnie, in any of the then typical racist stereotypes of black women as either mammies or Jezebels, making her closer to images of the ‘ideal’ white woman: beautiful, kind, compassionate, and loving. For Smith, Nonnie simply happened to be black. Nonnie was not written to be ashamed of her blackness, nor written to be an ‘honorary white woman’.

In her 1956 autobiography, singer Billie Holiday wrote that Smith named the book after the 1939 song ‘Strange Fruit’, written by Lewis Allen, which was about lynching and racism against African Americans.

Smith denied this, insisting that the book’s title referred to the ‘damaged, twisted people (both black and white) who are the products or results of our racist culture.’