Review of
Instaread Summary of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Five out of five stars
Lily Owens is a 14-year-old white girl that runs away
from the home maintained by her father in Sylvan, South Carolina. It is 1964,
so there is a great deal of racial tension with the looming prospect of
significant change in the social structure from segregation to something as yet
unknown. Lily’s father is depicted as being abusive, Lily killed her mother in
a gun accident when she was only four, so she has few memories of her.
When bees swarm
in Lily’s room, her black female caretaker Rosaleen calls it a harbinger of
death. Lily captures some and then releases them, a symbolic act that gives her
the incentive to run away. When Rosaleen goes to town to register to vote, Lily
goes with her and they are accosted by three racist white men. Rosaleen is
arrested and then beaten to the point of having to be hospitalized. Lily
manages to get her out and they flee, eventually ending up at a house run by a
set of black female sisters that keep bees. One of the three sisters has
serious mental problems.
Lily and
Rosaleen stay there and another character is a black teen male called Zach. He
helps with the beekeeping and becomes friends with Lily. There is some spark of
romantic tension between them, but they understand the dangers of mixed-race
relationships in the south at that time.
From this
summary, it is clear that the stage is set for some dramatic events regarding
the breaking of the segregationist color barriers. This was a time when black
men that paid any attention to white women were beat up and sometimes killed.
Lynching by a white mob was something that black men had to always be concerned
about. Yet, little is made of the relationship between Zach and Lily. There is
more of a focus on the mental issues aspect of the story.
For this
reason, while the summary gives the reader a good idea as to the plot of the
novel, it is also clear that the book itself simply avoids what would have been
the primary issue in the plot, a relationship between a black male and a white
female. While there is racially based violence in the book, the most
significant issues are bypassed. This is mentioned in the “themes” section at
the end of the summary.
“Large swaths of the story, however, fail to engage
the topic of race insofar as they ignore it.”
In a story set in South Carolina in 1964 that involves
a white girl living with a black family, not dealing with this is a fatal flaw
in the novel. It is something that the main characters would have faced every
day.
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