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Themes
Overcoming Separation With a Shared Purpose
Separation pervades the setting and drives the novel’s conflict—a core challenge that the garden helps the characters overcome by providing a shared goal. Through Ana’s narrative, the reader learns the historical and systemic inequalities and trauma that divide the people of Gibb Street. Gibb Street was initially a place where immigrants lived until they could move to more desirable neighborhoods; Ana describes the neighborhood as a “cheap hotel” people pass through, implying they have no incentive to connect with one another or care about their environment. This intensified when Gibb Street became the color line separating Cleveland’s Black and white residents. After the collapse of the factory sector, the neighborhood lost even a shared workplace, isolating people further. With jobs leaving and shops closing, Gibb Street and its residents are now abandoned and lack purpose, even contending with gun violence and addiction. There are many reasons for neighbors to stay isolated and no places for people to gather and share work or knowledge.
Each character faces separation in their personal life as well. For example, Kim feels disconnected not only from her deceased father but also from the rest of her family, who grieve for him differently than she does. Wendell, Ana, and Sae Young have also been separated from family by death. The stigma of being an immigrant and a pregnant teen separates Maricela from others. Language barriers, stereotyping, and physical differences drive wedges between people like Tίo Juan, who speaks an Indigenous language even his nephew doesn’t understand, and Royce, whom everyone fears because of negative stereotypes surrounding young Black men.
At first, these separations manifest in the garden, which Sam observes is set up “with few exceptions, the blacks on one side, the whites on another, the Central Americans and Asians toward the back” (33). Over time, however, the shared purpose and meaning each person finds in gardening draws them together, first as individuals and then as a community. Wendell shares his knowledge with Kim, regaining a sense of purpose, and Tίo Juan constantly helps and advises the others despite the language barrier. Leona lends her community organizing skills not only to rid the lot of garbage but also to ease the separation she feels from her deceased grandmother by planting goldenrod and lending maternal support to Maricela. Sam challenges the children to solve the garden’s lack of water; when the gardeners vote democratically for the plan to install rain barrels, some contribute pots for filling jars, and Sae Young contributes a set of funnels. Soon, this network of cooperation and shared problem-solving extends beyond the garden to address issues like theft and Royce’s unhoused status.
After a season of mutual care and hard work, the garden still reflects the community—but a tighter community where people mingle across lines of race, language, and age. The carefully drawn lines and fences of the early garden are overgrown by trailing vines and rambling squash. The very nature of a garden challenges both systemic and personal separation, as Florence knows: Her ancestors, formerly enslaved homesteaders, learned to overcome separation and trauma by putting down deep roots, carrying meaning over from year to year and generation to generation. When she sees Kim planting again the next year, Florence knows that the disparate people of Gibb Street have found a way back to their shared roots as humans in need of mutual support and purpose.
Nurturing as an Act of Faith and Healing
As a neighborhood, Gibb Street suffers neglect and abandonment; it is an unloved place that people hope to leave as soon as they can. There is much fear in the neighborhood and little to inspire pride and ownership, as evidenced by the trashed state of the lot, which Leona describes as having “garbage piled as high as your waist, some of it from the neighborhood and some dropped off from outside people” (25). Kim’s decision to plant beans, a small and personal act of faith and care, echoes the Parable of the Mustard Seed, in which faith as small as a mustard seed is enough to move mountains. Kim believes in her promise to her father—that her beans will thrive—and she cares for them so well that they survive a cold spring, sheltered by the old refrigerator. Her act of care helps heal the separation she feels from the father she never met, but it also banishes Ana’s cynicism, providing her with something to watch and care for and healing her own loneliness. In turn, she enlists Wendell, who sees the surviving sprouts with newfound faith that he can still have a positive impact in the world, allowing him to heal from the apathy he felt after losing his wife and son.
After Leona, who has faith in her ability to create action and be heard, gets the garbage cleared, more and more characters turn to the garden to heal both their inner conflicts and the deeper wounds and traumas of the community. For Sae Young, the garden helps heal the fear and loneliness of her past trauma. Royce, unhoused and beaten by his own father, finds that the care he puts into the garden on behalf of others comes back to him in an outpouring of support, from vegetables to a sense of family and a more permanent living situation. Mr. Myles even recovers some of the abilities lost due to a stroke—and, just as importantly, his desire to live. More broadly, the conversations and mutual support among the gardeners require faith that all come with good intentions, and nurturing these interactions helps the people in “sewing up the rips in the neighborhood” (31).
As Virgil’s story demonstrates, maintaining faith in the garden’s promise (and in other people) is not always easy. With his father as his living example, Virgil comes to the garden believing that hard work will be rewarded. His faith is tested when the lettuce, which he cares for as carefully as “a baby always crying for its milk” (43), does not thrive immediately. At the same time, Virgil’s trust in his father falters due to the latter’s lies. However, a shining locket Virgil finds in the garden becomes a way to dig deeper and weather momentary disappointment in both his father and the universe’s justice. Virgil persists, his faith exemplified both in his continued care for the lettuce and his prayers over the locket, eventually leading to a salable harvest for his father. Though terrifying and overwhelming at first, having faith in others and opening oneself to the vulnerability of nurturing something have profound and long-lasting impacts for both individuals and the communities they have had the faith to create.
Growth as a Result of Acknowledging and Accepting Diverse Perspectives
One aspect of Gibb Street’s struggle to create community out of separation and isolation arises from the distrust between people who belong to different groups and who view the world from their own singular perspective. By holding onto prejudice and personal value judgements, Gibb Street’s residents struggle to grow as individuals and as a community. It is not until the garden provides a safe, common venue that they can meet, share ideas, and learn, deepening their knowledge of each other and facilitating the type of personal development required for community growth.
The biases and inequalities that hinder progress are especially clear in Curtis’s story. As Curtis works in the garden, he endures racist taunting from the people who drink by the old liquor store. However, rather than lashing out or becoming embittered, Curtis draws on his experiences as a young Black man to help someone else: Royce, who is young, Black, and “built big,” reminds Curtis of himself. Curtis’s efforts not only provide the unhoused teen with food and purpose but also help integrate him into the community: Amir reflects that Royce once struck many of Gibb Street’s residents as “look[ing] rather dangerous” but that they have since overcome their preconceptions (78).
Gonzalo’s monologue explores a subtler form of prejudice. Despite his personal relationship to Tίo Juan, Gonzalo writes him off, assuming that Tίo Juan can only be a burden in the US due to his age, unfamiliarity with cities, and lack of fluency in English and Spanish. It is not until he sees Tίo Juan in the garden that Gonzalo realizes that while he himself “[doesn’t] know anything about growing food […] [Tίo Juan] kn[ows] everything” (22). Gonzalo accepts and even embraces Tίo Juan’s farming background as valuable and worthy of respect, and other gardeners, at first put off by the inability to understand Tίo Juan’s language, follow suit: They begin to see him as wise.
Amir explicitly credits the garden for the community’s gradual acknowledgement and acceptance of diverse people, explaining that its greatest power is “not relief to the eyes, but to make our eyes see out neighbors” (74). The garden allows people to authentically know their neighbors and overcome their prejudices and preconceived notions. This process culminates in the matanza. This tradition, brought to the Americas from Spain and practiced in the novel by Mexican American immigrants, draws people from all over the neighborhood into the garden. It prompts reflection on cross-cultural similarities—Amir remarks that the ensuing harvest festival reminds him of India—and strengthens bonds across differences.
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