Strange Fruit

By Billie Holiday
Written by Abel Meeropol
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
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
"Strange Fruit" is a dark, haunting song performed m ost famously by Billie Holiday, who
released her first recording of it in 1939. Written by Abel Meeropol [aka Lewis Allan] as a poem,
it condemned American racism and the lynching of African Americans.

Idealized south corrupted by racism and lynchings

The otherwise innocent and pure fruit
It mocks the way that the south views itself, and eats away at the image to show the startling
truth of the Souths socre
The burning flesh is the flesh in the sun, drying and wasting away

The smell of decaying flesh the contrast of idyllic paradise vs corrupt south.

The tone is sarcasm

The tone can be figured due to the word choice and the attitude of the speaker while they write or
speak. Zxxdd ees