Do you live in the city, the suburbs, a small town, or a rural area way out in the country? Depending on your answer, it might be very easy or very difficult for you to imagine the events in Seedfolks, which happen on a large city’s narrow streets and sidewalks.
In the first chapter of Seedfolks, Kim notes that her family now lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Then, in the next chapter, Ana describes the street and the building where they both live. Ana also explains how the neighborhood has changed over the years. Later, Leona tells readers about her experience of trying to get the city to pick up the garbage in the vacant lot on Gibb Street.
Each narrator in Seedfolks delivers a little more information about the setting of the story. However, you still might have trouble visualizing the street where things are happening in the novel. The video below can help you see what downtown Cleveland was like when the characters of Seedfolks would have lived there.
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The neighborhood where the Seedfolks story happened is fictional―there is no Gibb Street in Cleveland, Ohio.
However, the novel's setting is most likely based on a neighborhood like the one known as Detroit Shoreway, which is located two miles west of downtown Cleveland, right on Lake Erie.
In 1850, right after railroad tracks were laid along Lake Erie, several large factories were built in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood―though it wasn't really a neighborhood yet.
Workers moved to the area around the factories to fill the hundreds of jobs they provided. In the middle of it all, Detroit Avenue was built and lined with housing for the factory workers and their families.
When people immigrated to the Midwest from Europe, as they did throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s, many chose the booming city of Cleveland―and in particular the Detroit Shoreway area―as their new home.
Immigrants from many different countries in Europe settled along Detroit Avenue at the start of the 20th century. They spoke different languages and had different customs, but they mixed together and learned to speak English and helped shape a new American identity they could share.
Then, something important happened in Cleveland. Between 1930 and 1960, several major highways were built through the city. Homes and streets were demolished, and neighborhoods were divided up, all to make way for these wide, busy roads.
Smooth, fast-moving highways and more affordable automobiles made it easier for people to travel into the city from newer, less crowded neighborhoods, or suburbs, which allowed workers to buy larger homes outside the city with more space around them.
By this time, millions of African Americans had migrated from the South to the North and the Midwest, including Cleveland. They were seeking better-paying jobs and fleeing the discrimination and violence they had experienced in the South.
Starting in the late 1950s, residents whose parents or grandparents immigrated from Europe began leaving the inner city in large numbers.
The nicer neighborhoods they moved to typically excluded people of color. African American families and immigrants from regions other than Europe had few places to go, even when they had the money for new homes.
As a large swath of Cleveland's population moved outward, businesses followed, taking their tax dollars and jobs with them. And with less tax money coming in, the city could not hire as many workers to provide services for the families who remained―a situation that caused even more families to leave. Eventually, city officials seemed no longer to care about the people in neighborhoods like Detroit Shoreway.
By the 1990s, when Seedfolks was written, the value of the average home in the Detroit Shoreway area had fallen so low that only the poorest new residents―usually immigrants who arrived with few resources―were interested in moving there.
The novel Seedfolks was written in 1997, a time when community groups were working hard to revive the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood by persuading city officials, businesses, and new residents to invest in it. Today, their efforts have paid off―many parts of the neighborhood have been rebuilt and are once again attracting residents who have the resources to help it thrive.
The Seedfolks' effort to clear one vacant lot and build their little piece of "paradise" might seem small, but it also could be just the thing to turn Gibb Street around.
Question
How did downtown Cleveland―and the neighborhoods nearby―get so run-down?
