The Trees

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the use of racial slurs, racial violence, racial hatred, lynchings, and other forms of racist behavior.

Everett’s novel explores the long-term ramifications of endemic and institutionalized racism in America. Money, Mississippi, is a setting embedded with racism. Black people in Money live in a single, unofficially segregated neighborhood. White people in Money use racial slurs such as the n-word on a regular basis; the white community is united in little beyond their shared racism. Everett’s depiction of contemporary Money reads like a historical novel because of the overt racism and flippant attitude the white people of Money have toward Black people. When Jetty meets Ed and Jim, he warns them that Money is not in the 21st century, indicating that the town acts as a time capsule for the worst traits of American racism.

The white people of Money have been raised to be racist and repeat the cycles of racism from their parents. Most of the white male characters in this novel were raised by or are KKK members. These white characters fear the Black population of Money, and the detectives, for the past abuse of enslavement, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the modern-day institutionalized racism of police brutality and the prison-industrial complex.