JAN - The Secret Life of Bees

January review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 2002. [Diversity category]

The Secret Life of Bees has been on my bookshelf for some time now. The title had always intrigued me, as had the cover art (two things that I am known to succumb to when making decisions, never mind the old adage), but I'd never quite gotten around to reading it. I read a memoir of Kidd's, Traveling With Pomegranates, in which she described her quest to write this book as well as the way thinking and writing about the Black Madonna had changed her. So when the Diversity category came around, I figured this was as good a time as any to read it. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd details the story of Lily Owens, a fourteen-year-old white girl in South Carolina who breaks her black "stand-in-mother," Rosaleen, out of jail after witnessing some of the most raw prejudice in her short life. The two go on the run, fleeing from Lily's abusive father and the racist town that put Rosaleen in jail and then let the men who attacked her come into her jail cell after hours to try to finish the job. All they have to go on is a cardboard cutout of the Black Madonna that once belonged to Lily's mother, with the words "Tiburon, S.C." scrawled on the back. When they reach Tiburon, Lily catches sight of a honey jar bearing the very same Black Madonna that she carries with her, and inquiries lead her to August Boatwright, owner and beekeeper of Black Madonna Honey, and also the keeper of a number of secrets that could help Lily figure out her past and the mother she barely remembers. Rosaleen and Lily are invited to stay with the Boatwright sisters--there are three, August, June and May--and thus begins each woman's journey to reestablish herself, and heal the scars of her past.

Sometimes it was a little difficult for me to remember that Lily was supposed to be fourteen; her tone was very simplistic, and seemed like someone much younger at times, especially when talking about her mother. She lived in such a black-and-white space when it came to the woman who had died when she was very young, a space that pitted her against her abusive father (who albeit was pretty terrible, but got a little bit of growth in the end) and would not hear anything against her mother. Lily has a vague memory of the day her mother died, of her parents yelling and a gun falling to the ground, her touching it and then a sudden bang. The circumstances of this day are hazy to Lily an she never questions the reasons behind the scene until she has been at the Boatwrights' (also called "the pink house" because of its garish coloring) for a few months. In a lot of ways, this book is about Lily's journey into her own past, her connection with her mother, but I also believe that it is about Lily's journey into herself and her manner of thinking. She is forced to come to terms with a great many ugly truths throughout the course of the novel, from Rosaleen's arrest to Lily's inability to touch the boy that she is falling in love with in public because of the contrasts in their skin tone, from her mother's death to her father's pain and the fact that he was the one who stayed. Lily deals with a lot during her summer in the honey house, the house across the yard from the pink house where the honey is packaged and where she sleeps in a room of her own. This is very much a coming-of-age tale for Lily, from her departure from her hometown and T.Ray and peaches and kneeling on grits to her stubbornness in not leaving Tiburon at the end of the novel. Not only does she find herself, but she also finds a place to be herself, a circle of women who help nurture her and help her grow into the woman she is meant to be.

One of the discussion questions in the back of my copy of Secret Life asks if the reader thinks that there is a "queen bee" in the novel, and if so, who is it? There are a number of options, but I'm not entirely convinced that there is only one answer. August Boatwright is an obvious choice: she is the leader of the sisterhood in Tiburon that worships the Black Madonna, she is the eldest of the sisters, the owner of the honey company and the overseer of the house. The less obvious choice, and one that I believe holds a lot of weight, is that the Black Madonna is the queen bee of the story. It is difficult to put into words what she did for me over the course of my reading, but she surely had an impact, a strength that came through Kidd's words and Lily's descriptions that resonated with me in a way that I was not entirely familiar with. But for Lily, the Black Madonna brings her to Tiburon, introduces her to August, shows her an entire new circle of mothers in the Daughters of Mary. She helps her to find herself, helps each woman in the honey house in her own way. She is unassuming, but at the same time commanding, her outstretched fist a testament to hard work and standing upright. She is most certainly the queen bee of this story. And in her own way, she inspires the women who worship her, the women who tell the story of Our Lady of Chains, to become her own queen bee, to find a little bit of her in every aspect of themselves and the world around them. As August tells Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you. [...] You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside." Part of coming-of-age is finding strength inside of yourself, and relying on your self, and I think Sue Monk Kidd does an incredible job of translating that to the page here.

Finally, another part of this book that spoke to me was Lily's discovery of writing. Zach gives her a notebook and encourages her to just write. She starts to set down everything that happens to her, and says, "Words streamed out of me so fast I couldn't keep up with them, and that's all I was thinking about." (p289) My goal for this year is to not let my writing fall by the wayside with everything else I am doing, as it has the past few months. I am aiming to make time for myself consistently for writing, and I'm aiming to get my reviews done on time! (Starting next month, I promise!)