Seedfolks

by

Paul Fleischman

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Seedfolks: Chapter 5: Leona Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Leona’s Granny didn’t believe in doctors, even if the doctor happened to be Black. Leona grew up in Granny’s house in Atlanta. Every morning, Granny had a cup of goldenrod tea with a nutmeg in it—the only medicine she’d ever need. Granny’s doctors all told her that the tea would kill her, but every doctor died young. Leona accompanied Granny to the doctors’ funerals, where Granny always placed goldenrod on the graves. Granny, who lived to age 99, could recite the names of all the doctors she outlived.
Leona’s memories of Granny’s tense relationships with her doctors elaborate on the novel’s insistence that nature and the built human environment are opposites. On one side are people like Granny, who immerse themselves as nature and see it as healing. On the other side in this instance are medical doctors, who discount natural remedies as nonsense—but who nevertheless die long before a person who relies on herbal remedies. Nature, the novel suggests, is far superior to the built human world.
Themes
Nature, Mental Health, and the City Theme Icon
Family, Memory, and the Future Theme Icon
Leona thinks about Granny one day as she walks home from the grocery store. When she comes to the vacant lot, she sees three people in it. She expects that they’re searching for money in the lot, so she’s surprised to see that they have shovels and are cultivating gardens. Leona decides to plant a patch of goldenrod.
Just as Kim planted her beans to connect with her deceased father, hoping to get his spirit to notice her, Leona decides to plant goldenrod to honor her grandmother. This parallelism reinforces the idea that gardening can be a way to connect with one’s family members and honor their interests.
Themes
Family, Memory, and the Future Theme Icon
There’s another man watching from the sidewalk and a little girl looking down at the lot from a window. Leona figures that there are lots of people who’d like to grow a garden, just like her. Looking around at all the trash littered throughout the lot, she wonders why anyone refers to the lot as “vacant” when there are waist-high piles of garbage everywhere. Some of it comes from the neighborhood, but a lot of it comes from people outside of the neighborhood who don’t want to pay to take things to the dump. They think that the people in this neighborhood won’t mind a bit more junk or dangerous chemicals in their midst. Ironically, City Hall won’t pick up trash over here, but this area can get trash delivered to it.
Leona recognizes that a garden in this lot might also be capable of connecting unrelated people in the community. The mention that people dump trash here thinking that the residents won’t mind, and that the city won’t pick up trash in the neighborhood, speaks to the possibility that Cleveland doesn’t value its immigrant communities very much.
Themes
Gardening and Community Theme Icon
Nature, Mental Health, and the City Theme Icon
Leona wrinkles her nose at the smell of garbage and studies the gardeners. She knows that nobody will want to join them until the garbage is gone, and she knows this is a job for the phone, not a wheelbarrow. Leona has two kids who go to a school with “more guns than books,” so she’s experienced at picking up the phone to complain to officials about things. The next morning, a Monday, Leona stretches out on her bed. She knows she’ll have to say the same thing to several dozen people, and she might as well be comfortable.
The main thing blocking the community garden from really taking off is the city government, which won’t allocate resources for the garbage to be removed in the neighborhood. The book also seems to imply that such an overabundance of garbage is inherent to city life. But Leona nevertheless shows that it’s possible to push back on the city and improve her neighborhood.
Themes
Nature, Mental Health, and the City Theme Icon
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Leona starts dialing. Her goal in making all of these calls is to get in contact with the person that will make the garbage disappear. After spending six and a half hours making calls to the city, the county, the state, and the federal government, Leona learns that the city of Cleveland owns the lot. But Cleveland government officials don’t come down to this area unless they’re lost—“You can’t measure the distance between [Leona’s] block and City Hall in miles.”
Leona confirms that the city of Cleveland doesn’t really care about the neighborhood around Gibb Street. Given that it’s an immigrant neighborhood, the government’s indifference (or outright distaste) may have to do with internalized racism—especially since not taking care of this neighborhood means treating the immigrant residents like second-class citizens. In this way, the neighborhood is almost not even part of Cleveland, hence Leona’s insistence that it’s impossible to measure the distance in miles between her block and City Hall.
Themes
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
Quotes
Leona continues making phone calls the next day. Each person, organization, or agency tells her to call someone else, who then tells her to call yet another agency. These people are “trained to be slippery as snakes,” and they seem to always be on their lunch break. Nobody returns messages, and Leona spends hours on hold. On the third day, Leona realizes that when she makes these phone calls, she’s just a voice or a call waiting. She needs to make herself real to these people.
This passage gives readers insight into why the neighborhood’s garbage problem hasn’t been solved yet. Leona dedicates several days to this task, but even then, it’s nearly impossible for her to find the right person to talk to, and it’s also difficult to get the people on the other line to care about the problem or take her seriously. In addition, readers may recall that a lot of residents in this neighborhood don’t speak English and/or intend to move out of the neighborhood as soon as it’s financially viable, so taking on this project of advocating for their neighborhood may seem impossible or like a waste of time and energy.
Themes
Nature, Mental Health, and the City Theme Icon
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
At this point, instead of making more phone calls, Leona takes the bus downtown to the Public Health Department. She tells the pretty receptionist about the trash, and the receptionist tells Leona to sit and wait with everyone else. Leona does as she’s told, but she also opens the bag of garbage she picked up from the lot before she came. The smell is horrific. Everyone notices it, and they call Leona in for a meeting almost immediately. Leona is real to them now—she’s no longer just a voice on the phone—but she still brings the bag with her into the meeting to make the situation even more real.
Here, Leona makes the case that it’s easy to ignore a problem if it doesn’t seem real. When she was just a voice on the phone—or worse, spending hours on hold—Leona struggled to get city officials to realize how real and pressing the garbage problem is. But by bringing the bag of smelly garbage to the meeting, Leona forces the officials in the office to understand that there are people living with the stench of garbage day in and day out—and if it’s so awful in this office, it must be even worse in the neighborhood.
Themes
Gardening and Community Theme Icon
Nature, Mental Health, and the City Theme Icon