Arion Vance-Tresch
Mrs. Hughes
Contemporary Literature
13, March, 2018
Secret Life of Bees Review
As a reader I would say that the book The secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, was definitely worth reading. The book was able to interest me although I am a fantasy reader. The author did a fantastic job of creating an interesting variety of characters, from your main character, a damaged white teenage girl, to a very accepting middle aged black woman. As I read the book I could not help but enjoy the authors use of symbolism to compare the characters to the life of bees.
The Secret Life of bees is set in South Carolina where a young white girl (lily) lives with her abusive father (T-Ray). Lily is constantly haunted by the hazy memory of the night she accidentally killed her mother. Lily’s life is thrown upside down when her proud black nanny (Rosaleen) takes her into town so that rosaleen can vote for the very first time. On the way into town a group of white men insult Rosaleen resulting in her Pourning a saliva mixture onto the trios boots. Lily then assists Rosaleen in escaping and they run away to Tiburon, where Lily believes her mother once went. They are then taken in by three black sisters (August, May, and June Boatwright). With the sisters, Lily becomes mesmerized with their world of beekeeping, and genuinely happy, a feeling she is not familiar with. In Tiburon Lily explores her mother's mysterious past and also finds the mother she's been longing for.
In this book I liked how the author portrayed lily as being confident but also very self conflicted. Lily believes in herself, yet she blames herself for her mothers death. The author also brings in strong confident women, which was not common during that time period. Kidd sh...
