Sue Monk Kidd

The book, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd opens with a fourteen year old white girl, Lily Owens. She lives in Sylvan, South Carolina with her abusive father T. Ray and her housemaid, Rosaleen. Lily was only four years old when her mother died. She heard that it was because of her as well, and this is the only memory she has of her. The only physical items from her mother she had were a pair of gloves and a picture of a black Mary. Rosaleen decides to register to vote once the Civil…

From the time any living creature emerges into this world, their life becomes dedicated to growing and developing. Humans are especially suited to survive and endure the harsh attributes of life. Through each challenge that a person conquers, they become increasingly wiser. As life progresses, more and more challenges are brought on. As a result, as one grows older, they realize that they are capable of more than they’d ever thought. Set during the sixties in the fictional town of Sylvan,…

Throughout the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd sends the main character, Lily, on a journey to better understand where her mother came from. Lily was raised from an early age strictly by T. Ray, her father, who does not have a good or close relationship with her at all. Although T. Ray is only directly with Lily at the beginning and end of the novel, he affects Lily throughout the whole story. Kidd communicates that all people love differently by choosing to use T. Ray as both an…

In the book “Secret life of bees” an emotional historical fiction book written by Sue Kidd, Lily wants her mother more than anything in the world, But her mother is gone, so Lilly is trying to find information about her mother and where she went and Lily try's to find a new family. Throughout “Secret life of Bees”, Lilly is struggling to get over her mother’s death, but 3 african american women show Lilly that family can be found when least expected and love can be found in strange and wondrous…

Sue Monk Kidd always asks herself, “What does my character want?” and she makes those wants and desires the purpose of her characters’ stories. This applies strongly to her characters Handful and Sarah in her novel, The Invention of Wings. This novel closely follows Handfuls’s desire to be freed from slavery as well as Sarah’s desire to both be treated equal to men and to have a voice. Handful’s primary desire is to be freed from slavery. This is shown by the fact that the majority of the…

there was much segregation and racism followed by major attempts to integrate the country. In the late 1900s there was many attempts to integrate and equalize the country. This is not only the setting by which the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd takes place but also one of the major reasons that the story came to be. The racism during this time period in the book is one of the major reasons that Lily breaks Rosleen out of jail. For my project I decided to bake cupcakes that…

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a novel takes place in 1964 down in South Carolina. A teenage white girl, Lily Owens, and the black woman who raised her, Rosaleen, broke out of jail and fled to Tiburon, South Carolina to escape her past. Throughout the book there are events that shape her: Lily lying about her identity, when she finds out about her mother, and when her father finds Lily. Lily and Rosaleen arrive in Tiburon after running from the police because of a situation that…

Author Sue Monk Kidd was raised in a small town named Sylvester, Georgia, a town that had a deep influence in the writing of her first novel The Secret Life of Bees. She went to school and graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970 and after took creative writing courses at Emory University and Anderson College, as well as studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and along with going to many writer’s conferences throughout the years. This book is a coming of age fiction book. a coming of age book…

Sue Monk Kidd’s coming of age novel The Secret Life of Bees has many themes, a major one being that women are powerful. There is no lack of female characters, and each is strong in their own way, and as a community they are an incredible force, something the protagonist Lily comes to realize over the course of the story. In the opening of this story, Lily is in a society where women are not highly valued. This is implied through the times; the sixties wasn’t exactly known for the best…

The ending of "The Secret Life of Bees" was a fantastic ending, and it was fantastic because most, if not all of the loose ends of the story were all solved. To show all the resolved conflicts, the reader has to list the conflicts. One conflict was T Ray's return. The readers reading will and should anticipate when and if T Ray will return. Also, if he returns, will Lily have to leave. Another conflict was Lily and Rosaleen's charges, and whether if they will have to return, or will they be let…