Commentary on The Secret Life of Bees
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 pm (Books and Movies)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a coming of age story of a young white girl, Lily Owens, growing up in the rural South in 1964. The author has the African-American Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop for a story about Lily’s search for her self-identity through her quest to learn more about her mother.
It has been more than two years since I read the book and roughly twenty-four hours since I viewed the movie version starring Queen Latifah, Dana Owens. This is one circumstance where the movie did the book a great favor. Due to the time constraints of film, certain concepts were condensed into single phrases that encapsulated the very essence of the book, for example, at the opening scene Lily’s voice over states:
I killed my mother when I was four years old. That’s
what I knew about myself. She was all I wanted and I
took her away.
Here we see what is meant to be the premise of the book and the film. Lily must be propelled by fate to gain self-awareness. This process begins with her running away from her abusive father, freeing her nanny, Rosaleen, from hospital arrest for insulting a white man, and making her way to the home of May, June, and August Boatwright where she and Rosaleen find a safe haven and Lily starts to learn about herself and the suffering of others.
Without going into great detail and revealing the plot to those who have neither read the book nor seen the movie, there are typical coming of age issues that arise: learning a trade (bee-keeping), first love, death, injustice, and forgiveness. As a fan of Southern literature, I am instantly gratified by a tale set in the South that addresses these issues in an intelligent fashion. As an advocate of women’s literature, I am delighted to enjoy a well-written tale of a young lady facing her own demons and coming out stronger and better for it. However, as an African-American woman, I find the story to be all too common in a fundamental way: once again, the story of African-American women is being told by a Caucasian woman. While the stories of how African and African-American women and their Caucasian counterparts interacted in the past is an important one for a full understanding of our history as a nation, it is unfortunate that the story of the Boatwright sisters was not told from their point of view.
Some of the themes I imagine may be overlooked by traditional reviewers of this story are: 1) Lily starting her interaction with the Boatwright sisters with a lie and its symbolic correlation to the interactions whites have traditionally had with people of color around the world using lies and manipulation that caused confusion/disintegration of the social network; and 2) Lily bringing the outside and its violence into the sanctuary the Boatwright sisters had created for themselves and its symbolism for the way whites have brought violence and death through oppression to the shores of every land they invaded; and 3) Lily’s lack of regard and understanding of the real danger African-American boys/men faced (and continue to face) in a racist society (READ: American society not simply Southern society) brought death physically and symbolically to the tenderheartedness in African people that saves the Caucasian people from utter annihilation every day – when May dies, so do all good-hearted people.
It will be easy to talk about the secrets of the bees and the secrets of life. It will be easy to talk about racism in the rural South (as though it never existed in the North although there were only two states in the US that had no reports of lynchings). It will be easy to talk about overcoming hate and budding interracial relationships. There will be many discussions about May’s wailing wall and dealing with pain and loss. And, there will be a lot of talk about Lily learning about herself, learning that love is messy and people are a mess, and learning that forgiving herself for the accident that killed her mother so long ago would free her to become the woman she should grow into – strong, beautiful, and resilient.
But, will there be discussion about the African-American women who reared white children only to be reviled by them later in life? Will there be discussion of the women who left their own families to take care of the children of the people who belittled and humilated them each day? Will we hear the tales of the Boatwright sisters in their own voices? More importantly, will there be brave discussion of why, even in the early part of the so-called new millenium, the story of a young white girl telling the stories of African-American women is the best we can hope for in popular culture in the US?
M.B.
3 March 2009
julia said,
March 7, 2009 at 8:16 pm
it’s great to read your take on this story (book and movie–i agree it’s a good adaptation). i had mixed feelings as well when i read the book. yet the mainstream reviews that i found (and i need to research them more intently) were so one-sidedly positive, i was frustrated to find out if i was just a grumpy perfectionist or if others were less than 100% thrilled with it.
for me, the trouble wasn’t so much about point of view, which could be a fraught issue for a white writer to take on an african american first person voice i’d imagine. but more that i, as a white woman raised by an african american housekeeper in the south (in the 70s!), worried constantly that the white narrator’s personal growth was at the expense of the black women (in terms of the plot, as you point out) AND that Lily’s naivete lets white americans off the hook in a way, letting “us” read it and identify with the pure innocent child rather than own the fact of our own complicity in the system from which we benefit (likewise her “outsider” status as an abused child and not exactly bourgeois in class status).
i also felt a bit uncomfortable with the fact that it’s another “white child comes of age via her association with wise african americans” book, which has been such a popular trope since Huck Finn, through The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. given that this book was written so recently, i had hoped for more complexity. maybe alternating narrators from Lily to August and/or Rosaleen? but again that could have been a disaster if not successful.
that said, there were some things i noticed as making progress on that path. one part i did appreciate was that the Boatwright sisters are portrayed as more sophisticated than Lily and her family: more educated, better traveled, more artistic, etc. so that was a nice reversal from Huck and Jim. and while Rosaleen is not educated, she departs from the “mammy” role in interesting ways. i also liked the way Lily becomes aware of her whiteness when she’s in the room of women during the Sunday worship–that was well-done i thought.
but overall i do still have reservations and mixed feelings. i’m teaching the novel beginning in april; i had been using The Lovely Bones but needed a change. it will be the text for my freshman speaking class, so students will mainly just discuss the plot and simple elements, plus do research presentations on the social and historical contexts. it’s so hard to choose a good book for that class because their english levels aren’t always high, and it can’t be too long. but i like to use young narrators because they can identify a bit (as opposed to middle-aged narrators who remind them of their parents etc.). so i’ll let you know how that goes, and if you don’t mind maybe i’ll share your blog with the class after they’ve read some of it.
admin said,
March 8, 2009 at 8:21 pm
There’s so much more about this book that I didn’t even go into in this short space. A simple exploration of the symbolism of the bees and the statue reveals a direct link to African spirituality (especially as practiced in the Diaspora) that warrants further discussion and exploration as well as the Boatwright sisters themselves representing spirits in the African Traditional Religions (ATRs).
More so than point of view, because I am not convinced that a white woman in America has sufficient understanding of African-American culture, especially during that time in our history, to take on that voice, I was trying to get into a discussion of where are the Boatwright sisters’ stories? All of the women whom the Boatwrights represent in our society have largely had their stories left untold except as far as they relate to young white women and men.
One of my very favorite books that tries to get at these stories from a variety of voices and, in my opinion, helps to weave a better understanding of the complex relationship white and black women had (have), particularly in the South, is Telling Memories Among Southern Women by Susan Tucker. Perhaps a couple of the stories in this book will help to broaden the discussion in your class.
I would, of course, be honored to have your class look at my blog. I would hope for some interesting dialog and feedback if you would permit the students to write here.