Review: The Trees

The Trees by Percival Everett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is framed as a murder mystery, but at its heart it's less a mystery and more almost a meditation on the legacy of racial lynching across America; not just on African Americans/black people, but Asian Americans too. There's some subtext involved that may slip notice if you aren't already familiar with the historical references (e.g. the classic protest song "Strange Fruit"), but the end result is far from subtle.

It crosses a bit into the supernatural especially towards the end of things; on one hand it's attempting to be retributive by forcing a social reckoning in our collective faces, but on the other hand... I'm not sure what to make of it in light of the reality of how American culture actually is today. It almost feels like too much of a wish fulfillment to me. But at the least, it makes clear the pain in a way that isn't always apparent otherwise. Black folks in America have always been more culturally conscious of this fact and the rest of us are still playing catch-up generations after. 

The one chapter that painstakingly lists out of the names (and still not known names) of all the victims tracked in this book alone, Emmett Till and everyone that came before/after, is sobering. Like you turn page after page and think "when will this end?" and you realize that is what the victims' families and communities have asking all this time.