The Chinaberry Tree

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The Chinaberry Tree (1931)
by Jessie Redmon Fauset

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This work's dust jacket has been transcribed in a separate index page.

5194522The Chinaberry Tree1931Jessie Redmon Fauset

The

Chinaberry
Tree

JESSIE FAUSET

The
Chinaberry
Tree

By JESSIE FAUSET

What goes on within the walls which the more advanced classes of colored Americans have built about their pri- vate lives—a separate citadel which few white Americans ever penetrate?

Introduction by Zona Gale

By the Author of "Plum Bun"

^$2⁰⁰

The
Chinaberry Tree

by JESSIE FAUSET

Author of "Plum Bun," etc.
Introduction by Zona Gale

The fine mind and spirit, with the hampering circumstance of a Negro body—hampering because the white neighbor makes it so—is the theme of this powerful and dramatic story of a group of modern Negroes.

"In the story of Aunt Sal, Laurentine, Melissa and the Chinaberry tree," says Miss Fauset, "I have depicted something of the home life of the colored American who is not being pressed too hard by the Furies of Prejudice, Ignorance and Economic Injustice.

"And behold he is not so vastly different from any other American, just distinctive. . . . He is simple as befits one whose not too remote ancestors were connected with the soil, yet his sons and daughters respond as completely as do the sons and daughters of European settlers to modern American sophistication. . . . Briefly he is a dark American who wears his joy and rue very much as does the white American. He may wear it with some differences but it is the same joy and the same rue."

THE CHINABERRY TREE

The

CHINABERRY
TREE

A NOVEL OF AMERICAN LIFE

By JESSIE FAUSET

Author of "Plum Bun,"
"There is Confusion"

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

NEW YORKMCMXXXI

COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY JESSIE FAUSET

Printed in the United States of America

To
ELLEN WINSOR
My Friend

Chapters (not listed in original)

The
Chinaberry Tree

by JESSIE FAUSET

Harry Hansen says in th⟨e⟩
New York World-Telegram:

"Miss Fauset has worked out the difficult situation between Laurentine and Melissa with a fine appreciation of the psychological factors in a story that is well above the ordinary . . . She has opened a door on the life of the Negro of intellectual interests and on a society little known to the whites. It is, as Zona Gale points out in her introduction, the life of a great segment of Americans which deserves to be better understood."

What Authorities Say of
Plum Bun
by JESSIE FAUSET

George Schuyler, distinguished Negro author: "I have read all the novels written by and about Negroes that have been published in the past ten years, and I can say without the slightest hesitancy that 'Plum Bun' is the finest of them all. Not only is it an excellent work of literature but it is also by way of being the last word on race relations in fiction form."

Countee Cullen, best-known of the modern Negro poets: "'Plum Bun' is not a literary dainty. It is a vital, meaty novel which reading and thinking America is asked to digest. Assuredly a significant American work."

William Du Bois, noted Negro writer and Editor of The Crisis: "'Plum Bun' is a work of sincerity and finish and of extraordinary human interest. It will not interest those looking simply for the filth in Negro life but it will attract and hold those looking for the truth."

Walter Yust, Philadelphia Ledger: "Jessie Fauset is one of the important Negro writers of this day and generation who will be remembered long for work in both prose and poetry. . . . Miss Fauset is a poet. She can make suffering sing. . . . She mints tragic beauty out of the kind of person you see hurrying beside you on the street. . . . 'Plum Bun' is a novel with beauty informed, both in treatment and in story."

Shaemas O'Sheel, N. Y. World: "A serious, sincere and dignified work . . . vital with human hopes a⟨nd fe⟩ars. . . . Jessie Fauset writes from the inside, from innate ⟨understandin⟩g."

J. Wendell Clark, Chicago Daily News: "As the author of a fine story, gifted to a degree that will remain an incentive to read anything she might write in the future, Miss Fauset is to be congratulated."

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) before 1964, and copyright was not renewed.

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Works could have had their copyright renewed between January 1st of the 27th year after publication or registration and December 31st of the 28th year. As this work's copyright was not renewed, it entered the public domain on January 1st of the 29th year.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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