The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd
PRMS paperback 302 pages

I read this a long time ago (I'll unearth my review, if I can find it. It's pre-blogger.) Then I had some book club kids read it and we watched the movie after school in March(?). It was interesting to guide their discussion when I only had vague memories of the story, so I had to do a re-read. I only finished it this past week!

page 9 - the Women's Club bars Lily from Charm School because she has no mother or grandmother to present her! Imagine - a child who needs female guidance and instruction more than any other is refused that guidance. In essence, she's punished for being motherless. So sad!

page 12 - This made me chuckle. As Lily is pondering what her life would be like if Rosaleen could adopt her (if Rosaleen were white or Lily were black), she thought, "Once in a while I had us living in a foreign country like New York, where she could adopt me and we could both stay our natural color." (The idea of New York being a foreign country made me laugh, not the dilemmas of a motherless child pondering how to get past racism's barriers.)

page 147 - When Lily and August are talking about the house's ugly "Pepto Bismal" pink and making May happy. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters." Later, August says, "I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters." So true! Sometimes I'm appalled at my selfishness and how hard it is to choose lifting others up over my own wishes.

page 148 - The secret life of bees. The beekeeping and honey are beautifully woven throughout the story. August teaches Lily about bees and about life.

page 188 - When May goes out to the wall alone. I don't know if this bothered me as much the first time I read it as it did now when I knew what would happen . . .


page 201 - At the funeral, Lily is torn between her desire to spill everything she has been thinking about with August. "When I peered up at her, though, she was brushing tears off her face, looking for a handkerchief in her pocket, and I knew it would be selfish to pour this into her cup when it was already to the brim with grief for May." Such sensitivity for a fourteen-year-old! Recognizing another's pain and not wanting to add to it is a definite sign of maturity.

page 209 - I love how Lily is accepted by the Daughters of Mary and she is able to laugh about the white people's mortuary with its drive-through window! "I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us." I remember from my first reading of this book how much I loved the Boatwright sisters and their friends in the Daughters of Mary.

page 236 - When August and Lily finally have their big talk . . . "Because you weren't ready to know about her. I didn't want to risk you running away again. I wanted you to have a chance to get yourself on solid ground, get your heart bolstered up first. There's a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course. That's what I've been trying to do." I love her wisdom. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get there myself.

page 242 - When Lily comes to the conclusion that she is unlovable, it is so heart-breaking. Sadly, I can think of students who behave as though they are unlovable. I am so glad she has August to encourage her.

When she confronts T. Ray and asks who actually shot her mom when Lily was four years old, he answers that she did it accidentally. But then Lily thinks that T. Ray lies a lot. I think that was one of the things that frustrated me the first time I read this book. What actually happened? Did Lily accidentally shoot her mom? Or did T. Ray murder her in his anger and blame the "accident:"on a preschooler who couldn't really remember what happened? I like resolution!

I can't find my response from when I first read this book, but now this one is recorded here!

The Invention of Wings

by Sue Monk Kidd
Hennepin County Library hardcover 359 pages
genre: historical fiction (based on real people)

This book has been getting a lot of buzz and I was interested. There were things I loved about the author's Secret Life of Bees and things that frustrated me as a reader. This book is absolutely wonderful!

Told from the points of view of Sarah Grimke' and "her" slave Hetty / Handful, the story takes us from their earliest childhood memories in 1803 Charleston to their "wings" in 1838.

It's 5am and I have to hurry, so this review will not be well-done.

page 145 - When young Sarah asserts that the slaves should not only be free but also equal to the white people, she realizes that she has her thoughts about this topic and "could only attribute it to God, with whom I'd lately taken up and who was proving to be more insurrectionary than law-abiding." I love that! The slave owners were using Scripture to "prove" their right to own slaves and to keep the slaves in line, but she was learning something different about God's intentions.

page 115 - When Sarah catches Handful bathing in the copper tub in her room, she is shocked. "I saw then what I hadn't seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it."

page 207 - When Thomas (her beloved brother) draws Sarah out of her depression by sharing news of Jefferson's writing and the possibility of the country being split by slavery . . . When she responds, "If the Union dies, as our old president says, it will be from lack of imagination . . . It will be from Southern hubris and our love of wealth, and the brutality of our hearts!" I love when he says, "There she is. That's my sister." It's sad that women of that era had such a narrowly defined range of options. Sarah had wanted to study law like her brothers, but was soundly discouraged when she stated her wish. Her father even forbade her entrance to his library which he had previously allowed.

page 291 - I love when Handful takes Sky to see Denmark Vesey's house. "He would've called you daughter if he'd had the chance." Handful is such a deep and amazing character. I love that her mother hadn't taken the money. It was in the story quilt all along! I love the quilting throughout the story and the meaning it had for these women who were never supposed to read or write (though I'm glad Sarah taught Handful).

page 297 - Sarah writes to her sister Nina, "It has come as a great revelation to me that abolition is different from the desire for racial equality. Color prejudice is at the bottom of everything. If it's not fixed, the plight of the Negro will continue long after abolition." How true!

Author's notes - when I first encountered Lucretia Mott's name in the story, I was a bit surprised because she really lived and worked in women's rights . . . and then I discovered that the story of the Grimke' sisters is based on women of that name who lived and worked in the abolition and women's rights movements. They were truly ahead of their time! They were speaking out well before Seneca Falls . . . how have I not heard of them before?!?! This makes me want to do some research. Kidd has a great bibliography and these are a few titles she highlights: