Strange Fruit Analysis

What kinds of fruits emanated to your mind when the word ‘strange’ comes before it? In the song “Strange Fruit” the singer of the song sings about some rather strange fruit. The singer is an African American, female Jazz singer called Billie Holiday. “Strange Fruit” was released during 1939 in the time where segregation was still pretty big in the south. Lynching had been happening for a few years before the song was released. While definitely a way to dehumanize African Americans, which is wrong, there was some reasons for them other than simple hating of a different race. Some of the lynching were as a way to get back at the black people, especially in case of the kids who couldn’t be sent to jail because they were too young. In an article this is exactly what happens. It states: “the lynching of two Negro boys who had been guilty of criminally attacking and murdering a white girl" (“Glorying in Their Shame”).
Holiday’s song alludes to the recent Southern lynching that were going on in the south. She paints this unsettling picture through her words of what these ‘strange fruit’ appear to be from an almost child-like perspective. Its effectiveness was pretty well as the song sold a lot and many artists from all sorts of mediums were inspired by it. “Strange …show more content…
In the song the lyrics create a rather disturbing picture: “Black bodies swingin ' in the Southern breeze; Strange fruit hangin ' from the poplar trees” (Holiday). She describes how the bodies hanging from the trees are reminiscent of the kinds of fruits that grow in trees. It becomes more surreal with lines such as “The bulgin ' eyes and the twisted mouth” and “fruit for the crows to pluck” (Holiday). The people who were discarded there to hang after the lynching were neglected to rot and become crow food as their bodies where left mangled. Truly a foreboding scene that left a surreal image in most of the song’s