Becoming a Seedfolk

In life, there are always difficult situations that come about outside of one’s control.  Whether it’s poverty, racism or dealing with death, people have a choice to either face them or run away from them.  This is exactly what happens to the characters in Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman.  In this book, many characters begin a community garden in their tough neighborhood.  The author wrote Seedfolks with many perspectives to show how different people can overcome social issues like dealing with death by changing and taking action.

One of the characters who deals with death is Kim.  As her family marks the ninth anniversary of her father’s death with candles, incense and offerings, she finds herself staring at a picture of the man she never knew.  She was born eight months after his death, and according to her family’s Vietnamese culture, honoring her father’s death is still a yearly event.  This year though, Kim does something new.  She went to a vacant lot and planted lima beans and thinks “he would see me….He would see my patience and my hard work.  I would show him that I could raise plants, as he had.  I would show him that I was his daughter” (p. 4).  In doing this, Kim deals with her fathers death by taking action.  She plants beans in hopes to gain his spirit’s attention.  

Another character who has lost loved ones is Wendel.  This old, school janitor lost his son in a street fight and his wife in a car crash.  As a result, he can’t bear to hear his phone ring, wondering who else might have died.  When watering Kim’s beans in the garden, he figures out that he can’t change his life.  He thinks, “Can’t bring the dead back to life on this earth.  Can’t make the world loving and kind...But a patch of ground in this trashy lot--I can change that.  Better to put my time into that than moaning about the other all day” (p.15).  It is because of the garden that he realizes that instead of wasting his time on the past, he should think about the future.

Finally, Paul Fleischman introduces the reader to Sae Young, a Korean woman, who lost her husband.  After her husband died of a heart attack at 37, she was alone.  And when an intruder came into her dry cleaning shop, no one was there to defend her.  These experiences made her so fearful, she didn’t want to see anyone anymore.  Then she saw the garden, and she decides to change.  She thinks, “I want to be with people again.  Next day I go back and dig small garden.  Nobody talk to me that day.  But just be near people, nice people, feel good, like next to fire in winter.”  (p. 47).  By stepping into the garden and taking her own space, she overcomes her fear to join a new community.  This action helps her deal with her husband’s death.
To sum up, through his characters, Paul Fleischman emphasizes how important it is to take action when confronting a social issue.  It’s important because if we don’t, our lives may just not be as great.  So let’s become seedfolks ourselves by taking root and pushing ourselves to grow beyond the social issues that may define us.


Image from:  www.npr.org