Our gal Florence may call herself “just a watcher,” but we find out that she's actually
a super attentive observer
. In fact, she reminds us of another onlooker: Ana, from Chapter 2—just a little less creepy.
What is seedfolks main message?
The overriding theme of “Seedfolks” is
the power of the individual to effect good in a society
. Related themes include the challenge of community and the healing aspect of working with the land.
What is Florence seedfolks?
The final narrator of Seedfolks, Florence is
an older Black woman and a “watcher”
. … “Seedfolks,” she explains, are the first members of a family or a community to settle somewhere. She explains how her own “seedfolks,” her great-grandparents, were freed slaves who walked all the way from Louisiana to Colorado.
Who is Ana in seedfolks?
Ana is
an elderly woman who watches the changing neighborhood through her apartment window
. She moved to Gibb Street in 1919, when she was four, and has seen the cultural make-up of the neighborhood change throughout the years. She notices Kim outside in the vacant lot and assumes she's up to no good.
How old is Sam seedfolks?
You see, Sam is a
seventy-eight year old
Jewish man who just wants everyone to get along. He's spent his whole life doing jobs to bring people together, and now he wants to make some cross-cultural friendships happen in the Cleveland community garden, too.
Why did Fleischman write seedfolks?
I would seem to have nothing in common with her. But my own mother had died a few years before Seedfolks.
A desire to make a connection with that person who has passed away is universal
, and it came out in that story. … In fact, Fleischman says, the word “seedfolks” came to him before he started to write this book.
What are some themes in seedfolks?
- Man and the Natural World.
- Community.
- Race.
- Memory and the Past.
- Family.
- Time.
- Language and Communication.
- Death.
What is the plot of seedfolks?
In Paul Fleischman's novel Seedfolks ,
a junk-strewn, rat-infested city lot is transformed into an urban oasis, a process that transforms the gardeners' lives, as well
. From the day when the secret plantings of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl…
Why doesn't Ana have a TV Seedfolks?
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Seedfolks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
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.
Where is Ana from Seedfolks?
Ana is an elderly white woman and one of the novel's narrators; she came to
Cleveland from Romania
as a small child.
Why did Ana dig up Kim's bean seeds?
Why did Ana dig up Kim's bean seeds and how did she feel? Ana dug up the seeds
because she thought Kim was doing something she shouldn't be doing, like hiding drugs
. She felt badly and gently put the beans back in the ground.
What does Sam gain from being in the garden in seedfolks?
Sam is super excited about growing a garden in the lot because he really likes to help people. … This means Sam is a bit too old to do hard labor in the garden, so he hires a Puerto Rican teenager to help him out. In addition to paying the teenager, Sam also gives
him a row to grow something of his own
.
How does Sam impact the community seedfolks?
Sam
notices people and engages them
, whereas many of the others in the neighborhood ignore each other. He gives a teenager a job tilling the soil and gives a third grader a job hauling water in his wagon. He holds a contest for children to come up with a way to solve the problem of watering the garden.
What did Sam mean when he said the garden was a copy of the neighborhood?
Who says, “The garden was a copy of the neighborhood”? Explain the metaphor, “A duck gives birth to a duckling, not a moose” in the chapter about Sam. It means that
the neighborhood created a garden that is just like- not different than- itself.
Is Virgil in seedfolks a girl?
The Haitian boy named Virgil in the novel Seedfolks has just finished fifth
grade
and is looking forward to having the summer off. His father, on the other hand, is hard-working, ambitious, and has other ideas for his son. While Virgil is very obedient and helps his father grow fancy…
Why is it called seedfolks?
Her father called them “seedfolks”
because they were the first black family to settle in that location
. Florence then calls the community gardeners on Gibb Street “seedfolks” because they were the first to plant their seeds in the run-down lot.
