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Chapter 1: Kim
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Seedfolks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gardening and Community
Nature, Mental Health, and the City
The Immigrant Experience
Family, Memory, and the Future
Summary
Analysis
Ana loves to sit and look out the window. It means she doesn’t need a TV, as from her window she can see 48 apartment windows and a sliver of Lake Erie. From this window, she’s seen history. She moved here in 1919 at age four and watched horse-drawn fruit carts and coal wagons outside. Back then, it was mostly Romanians who lived on Gibb Street. But this is a working-class neighborhood and people only stay until they have enough money to leave. After the Romanians came the Slovaks, Italians, and Black families.
Insisting that she doesn’t need a TV because she has so much to look at out her window suggests that the trappings of the modern world, such as TV, aren’t as necessary as one might think. Indeed, if one is only willing to look outside, there’s a whole world of entertainment available. Ana also gives readers a brief history of immigration in Cleveland. Her history lesson paints things in broad strokes, but it seems clear that the neighborhood encompassing Gibb Street is constantly changing as immigrants come and then leave.
Active
Themes
Gibb Street eventually became the line that divided the Black part of town from the white part. Ana lived across town for 18 years and then moved back to take care of her parents—and at that point, the line between Black and white moved too. The white people left first, but once the factories closed, then everyone left. Buildings sat empty, men sat drinking, and people killed each other.
Previously, Ana didn’t talk about the changing neighborhood as though it was necessarily a bad thing—but here, her story takes a turn for the worse. She suggests that while the constant revolving door of immigrants may have made for a generally unstable community, losing economic opportunity in the form of the factories has turned the neighborhood into a dangerous place. This suggests that Kim was right to be nervous about being in the lot—she might be at risk of experiencing violence out on her own.
Active
Themes
Now, Ana sees families from Mexico, Cambodia, and other countries she knows nothing about. There are new languages in the neighborhood, but the one thing that doesn’t change is that people still leave as soon as they can. Ana is the only one who stays. She still stares out the same window she did as a young girl.
Active
Themes
This spring, Ana sees something odd. Down in the abandoned lot next to her building, she sees a little girl with black hair digging in the dirt behind a refrigerator. The girl looks around suspiciously, and it only takes Ana a moment to realize the girl is burying something. Though Ana has no children of her own, she’s certain that this girl is involved in something illegal. Ana has spent the last 20 years as a typist for the Parole department, so she’s sure the girl has just buried drugs, money, or a gun.
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Ana considers calling the police, but she spends the next few mornings watching the girl instead. It rains a few days in a row and Ana doesn’t see the girl at all. When the weather warms, Ana sees her several times in the mornings on her way to school, crouching down with her back to Ana’s window. Ana’s curiosity feels like a fever.
Active
Themes
One morning, the girl looks around and glances right into Ana’s window. Ana pulls back, hoping the girl didn’t see her. If the girl saw her, the girl will definitely dig up her treasure and move it. Ana vows to dig it up first, so she waits an hour after the girl leaves. Then she takes a butter knife and hobbles to the girl’s spot in the vacant lot. Ana hacks in the dirt with her butter knife, but only finds some big white beans.
Active
Themes
Suddenly, Ana realizes what’s going on and what she’s done. Two of the beans have roots and she knows she’s harmed them. It feels like she’s read the girl’s secret diary and accidentally ripped out a page. Ana carefully replants the beans. The next morning, the girl is back and Ana can see her water beans. That afternoon, Ana buys binoculars.
