Beneath the Sycamore Tree

Beneath the Sycamore Tree is a period piece that spans from the 1960s to 1980s. While the novel’s setting is from that era, the ignorance and preconceived attitudes the protagonist as well as her family experiences are all relevant today. It chronicles the life of a young black girl from a middle-class family in Jackson, Mississippi; who through her relationship with her grandmother discovers dreams do not have to be deferred. It is an emotional journey as she travels the world, taking risks and finding what it takes to become successful. She discovers herself and love in the process with an unlikely, and at that time, forbidden lover and friend.

As a black woman, her tested growth leads her to have and relish a defining relationship with her friends and lover. Lisa’s family’s experience with classicism and racism catapults her into the mindset that in order to transform the collective, she has to be willing to broach racism, sexism, and the social norms in places that perpetuated it with a clear understanding of who she is.

Beneath the Sycamore Tree is unique because it exposes the reader to and defies stereotypes about people of color during one of the most challenging eras of girded underbelly segregation in the South and around the world. A little black girl becomes a determined woman because she believes in herself and held on to her grandmother’s words that she can become whomever she wants to become resulting from the love and dialogue beneath the sycamore tree.