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Chapter 11: Maricela
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Seedfolks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gardening and Community
Nature, Mental Health, and the City
The Immigrant Experience
Family, Memory, and the Future
Summary
Analysis
India has lots of big cities, just like the U.S. But in India, everyone knows their neighbors. Here, people avoid contact and treat everyone like an enemy until they prove themselves to be a friend. When Amir first saw the garden, he thought of his parents’ Persian rug, which depicted vines, rivers, grapes, flowers, and birds. Rugs like that are portable gardens. Amir remembers how, in the middle of the hot Delhi summers, he’d lie on the rug with his sisters, trying to enter the cool, lush world depicted on the rug. The garden in Cleveland is green and just as soothing as the rug was. But the garden isn’t just beautiful—it also makes people see their neighbors.
Though much of the novel criticizes city life, Amir takes a more nuanced perspective here when he suggests that city life can be satisfying and nourishing as long as a person knows their neighbors, like they do in India. From his perspective, the core issue with American cities is the lack of community, which is what makes the community garden so rare and special. On another note, in talking about the “portable garden” of his family’s Persian rug, Amir suggests that gardens and nature are a form of escape from the outside world. Other characters in the novel have felt this way about the community garden, too—like when Sam referred to the garden as paradise or Eden.
Themes
Amir grows a variety of vegetables, including eggplants. The eggplants first turn an eerie, pale shade of purple. They’re the only things in the garden that color, and Amir’s toddler son desperately wants to pick them whenever he comes to the garden. Lots of people come over to ask about the eggplants. Amir recognizes some of the people, though none of them have ever spoken to him before. The eggplants become an excuse to “break[] the rules and start[] a conversation.” People seem happy to be able to be friendly.
Here, Amir discusses the “rules” that govern how people interact with each other. These social codes, he implies, dictate that it’s unusual to go up to someone and start a conversation out of the blue. The garden provides a way to subvert those rigid codes of conduct by giving people things to talk about. People seem relieved to break free from these behavioral norms that force them to keep to themselves. Many of the characters are longing for connection, belonging, and community, and the garden fosters exactly that.
Themes
These conversations tie the gardeners together. One night, someone dumps a load of tires in the garden, crushing four rows of young corn. In the morning, it only takes a group of gardeners an hour to get the tires piled by the curb. A few weeks later, Amir and some other men hear a woman scream down the block. A man with a knife stole the woman’s purse, and three men—including Amir—run after him. To Amir’s surprise, they catch the thief. Royce holds the man to the wall with his pitchfork until the police arrive. Afterwards, Amir asks the others if they’ve ever chased a criminal before. They haven’t, and they probably never would have if it weren’t for the garden. The garden makes them feel like part of a community.
Just as Miss Fleck scolded the man for throwing garbage into the garden, Amir and the other gardeners now feel like it’s their duty to protect their garden space—and the safety of the surrounding neighborhood. This shows clearly that the garden isn’t just a way to make friends and grow food; it also spurs the gardeners to take care of the surrounding community, too. Royce’s reappearance shows that he’s probably still living in the garden (earlier, he noted that the garden is safer than the domestic abuse he faces at home). Because the garden protects him, Royce feels compelled to protect the garden and surrounding community, too.
Themes
Amir came to the U.S. (specifically to Cleveland) in 1980. The city is one of immigrants and is known for its Polish population. Amir had always heard that Polish men are steelworkers, while Polish women cook lots of cabbage. But he’d never met a Polish person before working in the garden. She’s an old woman with a garden next to Amir’s, and they discover they live near each other too. They talk often.
It’s significant that Amir, an Indian immigrant, admits that he buys into stereotypes about people from other countries. Accepting and perpetuating stereotypes is a human impulse, but the garden helps to dismantle people’s preconceived notions of one another. This is similar to how the garden helped Gonzalo see a fuller picture of his Tío Juan.
Themes
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When they watch their carrot seedlings come up, Amir asks why the woman doesn’t thin hers (i.e., pull out baby plants to leave behind one healthy plant every few inches). She knows she should, but the process reminds her of living in the concentration camp. Prisoners were inspected every morning and divided into two lines, one to live and one to die. Her father was an orchestra violinist who spoke out against the Germans, leading to the family’s arrest. Hearing this, Amir realizes he’s never heard anything useful about Polish people. What he’s heard only hides the richness of Polish culture. He doesn’t know or care whether the woman cooks cabbage.
Indeed, as Amir listens to the woman talk about living in a concentration camp during World War II, he realizes that the stereotypes surrounding Polish people aren’t at all useful. Stereotypes—like the idea that Polish women cook a lot of cabbage—only distract from the richness and depth of a culture and fashions people into one-dimensional versions of themselves. Accepting stereotypes is similar to the social code that dictates that people should keep to themselves rather than strike up conversations—at least in this neighborhood, it seems to be an unspoken rule. But the garden dismantles both of these social norms and gives people something to connect over (here, the carrots), from which their relationship can then grow (here, talking about the concentration camps).
Themes
The whole garden learns this same lesson through Royce. Royce is young, Black, and “look[s] rather dangerous.” At first, people seem relieved whenever he leaves the garden. But as Royce spends more time in the garden, the other gardeners find out more about him. He stutters, has two sisters, and likes the cats in the garden. He also enjoys working with his hands. Before long, all the women try to feed Royce—and these are the same women who would’ve crossed the street to avoid him weeks earlier.
Just like the Polish woman does for Amir, Royce helps the gardeners learn to challenge stereotypes and not make assumptions about people. It’s clear to Amir and to readers that Royce isn’t a dangerous person; he’s a homeless teen in search of community, and the garden provides him with exactly that.
Themes
In return, Royce waters for people when they’re sick. He also makes repairs, weeds, and makes brick paths. But he always pretends that he wasn’t the one who did these tasks. It becomes an honor to be chosen by Royce. Soon, he’s trusted and liked, and after chasing the thief with the pitchfork, he becomes famous. He becomes more than a Black teenage boy—he’s Royce.
In this passage, Amir emphasizes that it’s necessary to get to really know a person as an individual rather than relying on stereotypes about a given people group. And getting to know one’s neighbors, the novel suggests, improves communities by imbuing people with the desire to support, protect, and better the neighborhood for the sake of the entire community.
Themes
In September, Royce and a Mexican man collect lots of bricks and build a big barbecue. Amir is in the garden on a Saturday when the Mexican family pulls up with a dead pig. They build a fire and start to roast the pig. Soon, their friends start to arrive with food and instruments. It’s unclear if they’re celebrating a birthday or just having a party for no reason. It’s a beautiful day; the garden is just starting to change from green to brown. Before long, everyone working in the garden feels the party’s spirit. Soon, the entire garden is full of people.
The way that this party morphs from a private celebration to a block party mirrors the garden’s transformation over the course of the novel. What began as Kim’s solo endeavor to grow lima beans to connect with her deceased father eventually transformed into a communal space where everyone can find connection and belonging.
Themes
The party turns into an impromptu harvest festival. People bring food, drinks, and more instruments; Amir fetches his wife and son. They slice open watermelons, show off their produce, and trade vegetables. The gardeners also give food away freely, even Amir, who was trained as a businessman to always make a profit. The garden offers an excuse to break that rule.
Again, Amir makes it clear that the garden is responsible for cultivating the spirit of community and generosity that now grips everyone. Because they feel like part of community and as though they’re among friends, it’s easy to give away vegetables.
Themes
Amir speaks to many people at the party. As he tells them where he’s from, he wonders if they know as little about Indians as he did about Polish people. One Italian woman says that she’s been admiring Amir’s eggplants for weeks and is thrilled to meet him. They chat, but something bothers Amir. Then he remembers: last year, this woman claimed that she’d gotten the wrong change in Amir’s store and had angrily called him a “dirty foreigner,” despite being an immigrant herself. Amir brings up this incident. The woman apologizes and says that “Back then, I didn’t know it was you.”
This Italian woman’s line that she didn’t know it was Amir encapsulates the novel’s insistence that people must get to know others on a personal level rather than rely on negative stereotypes about certain people groups. Though it's unclear if meeting Amir changes her contempt for other immigrants, it nevertheless changes her perception of Amir: because of the garden, he now has a name and a history, and she considers him a friend. This passage also underscores that feeling unwelcome is a common element of the immigrant experience. The community garden is a remedy for this, because it gives people from all walks of life a common sense of belonging. While they may all belong to different cultures or have different home countries, they all belong to this neighborhood and the smaller garden community.
Themes
