Part I: The Cashew Tree
Strange fruit… that was my first thought when I saw a cashew hanging from a tree. Although the history of those two words carries a painful origin—at least in America—what I saw that day in West Africa looked more like wonder than sorrow.
The phrase “strange fruit” became etched into American memory in 1939, when Billie Holiday stood under a single spotlight and sang a protest against racial terror:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root…”
But “strange fruit” wasn’t just a metaphor. It referred to the lynching of Black Americans—descendants of enslaved Africans—who were hanged from trees by mobs in acts of racial hatred. Their bodies, left suspended in public view, were the “fruit” of a violent American soil. The term was first coined by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher and activist, who wrote it as a poem before Holiday gave it voice.
Yet, decades and continents removed, I stood before a very different kind of strange fruit—a cashew. It looked like something from a surreal painting. A bright, spongy, reddish-orange fruit—shaped like a bell pepper—hung delicately from a low tree, but attached to its tip was a crooked gray-green shell. It was the seed. The part we call the “nut.” It didn’t grow inside the fruit—it grew outside of it, exposed, awkward, like a question mark in nature’s sentence.
When I learned it was a cashew—I believe it was my father who told me, smiling and elated to be showing me his garden—I was stunned. He had retired to The Gambia, realizing a lifelong dream held by many African Americans whose ancestors were cut from their roots by the Atlantic slave trade. Like so many of us, he didn’t know exactly where we came from in Africa, but returning to the continent, to the soil, to a life beyond the Western world’s shadow was his dream he turned into a reality.
Inside the walled garden of his home were mango trees, a lemon bush, lettuce, and other homegrown delights. It was the cashew tree that impacted and surprised me the most. Cashews are not nuts—they’re seeds. In their raw form, they’re toxic. Their shells contain anacardic acid, the same chemical found in poison ivy. To be eaten, they must be roasted, steamed, stripped and processed. Unfortunately, in some countries, that work is done by women under harsh conditions, without proper gloves and with little pay.
What we snack on casually is the result of scorched labor, fire and danger.
Cashews are native to Brazil, but Portuguese colonizers spread them across Africa and Asia in the 1500s. Today, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, and the Ivory Coast lead the world in production. Behind the neatly packaged tins in grocery stores is a complex labor story.
Still, there is beauty in the cashew’s journey.
“Cashews are an excellent source of healthy monounsaturated fats, which are great for heart health,” says Dr. Lisa Young, a nutritionist and adjunct professor at NYU. “They’re also rich in magnesium, which helps regulate blood pressure and support strong bones.” Dr. Uma Naidoo, a nutritional psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, adds, “Cashews contain tryptophan and magnesium, which play a role in supporting mood and reducing anxiety. They’re one of the most underrated plant-based protein sources.”
When I reflect on my father’s cashew tree, I feel gratitude for what it taught me and for what it revealed. I haven’t seen that tree in a while. Still, it crosses my mind now and then. A curved little seed, hanging from a sponge-red fruit, in the garden of a man who made his way back to a continent that once lost him—and now holds his story.
Not every strange fruit is born of sorrow. Some, like the cashew, are strange in form, powerful as challenged in their journey, and sweetened by the soil they choose to return to.
