Where Johnny passes down a dreamers’ vision, Katie imparts a never-say-die determination essential to survival.įrancie’s existence shares nothing in common with the glamorized depictions of poverty common to other young adult literature produced from the distant past until the present day. Katie, a tougher love, is the family breadwinner who squirrels away money from her work as a cleaning woman. A subject of mockery for others, he is nevertheless much beloved by Francie, who sees underneath his tortured, clownish veneer to the sensitive and intelligent man he really is. Johnny, an alcoholic, does what he can to earn money here and there as a singing waiter. Set initially in 1912 in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, then populated by Irish, German, and other European immigrants from the ongoing great wave of immigration that so transformed American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn chronicles the lives of Francie, her younger brother Neeley, and their parents Johnny and Katie. Appropriately, this variety of sumac also is known as the Tree of Heaven. The tree’s durability is symbolic of Betty’s, as she not only endures, but manages to flourish in the midst of adversity, expressing a rare form of internal and external beauty that remains pure, despite all that goes largely unappreciated. Where other plants have adapted to the extreme conditions of desert, mountain, or jungle, this tree has accommodated to the harshest environment of all in urban greater New York City. The tree referenced in the title is a type of Asian sumac that grows outside the bedroom of the book’s main protagonist, eleven-year-old Francie Nolan. More deeply, however, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a simple story of survival. That alone helps to explain why it remains relevant and relatable. This message of tolerance (and intolerance) resonates throughout this novel of an extended family living on the fringes of society. So, you see, Mama, the beginning of this novel really started when, as a child, I began to notice the world of Brooklyn around me.” I grew up wanting to protest in some way against intolerance. I was playing in one of those Brooklyn streets one sunny afternoon and I saw a group of right-minded housewives throw stones at a mother who wasn’t married. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith.īetty Smith, the author of the timeless novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, later reminisced about the origins of this book in a hypothetical conversation with her mother: “It started when I was eight years old.

A tree grows in brooklyn