Sunday Story Ratings #28: Fruit Tramp
Fruit Tramp by Daniel Mainwaring
Originally published July 1934 in Harper's; this edition 1995
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)
M
(D, V, L)
Drug references (PG) {Suggestion someone's sons may have been smoking; Cigarette-rolling + smoking}
Violence (M) {Sibling tussling; people showing up with black eyes; a brawl}
Mild Coarse Language (PG)
Representations
Gender:
Predominantly male characters, only men move the plot.
Sex:
No direct sexuality, families presented only in monogamous heterosexual format.
Race & Ethnicity:
One off-screen character possibly Japanese (based on being consistently referred to by the narrator as "the Jap"). Anti-Russian / communist sentiment as a trouble-stirrer. Everyone else unmarked US-dweller.
Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:
Typhoid fever mentioned as a thing that happens. One character who incites trouble described as a hunchback.
Notes
This one didn't feel like a crime story at all. I suppose the violence at the end is against the law... perhaps it does count. The story is about, so far as I can tell, the crushing circumstances of the Great Depression in the US pitting people against each other.