Last year I did a lot of traveling for my day job. I was consistently on the road for at least 2 hours each week and I chose to spend my time listening to self-help audio books. One of the books addressed a topic that I have struggled with and have worked really hard to educate myself and become far more aware. That topic is racial equality. This particular book was a memoir of a Caucasian woman who grew up in the Deep South and her battle to overcome the notion of “white privilege.” It was an intense listen for me because I picked up on my own imperfections in how I think about individuals of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. The weight of these two words -- racial equality -- continues to be heavy on my heart and it especially weighs heavy as the United States of America quite literally has erupted over the recent murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN. In the days leading up to his murder, I happened to be reading a fabulous fiction book about racial equality and togetherness and this book was a game changer for my soul and my continued quest to advocate for social justice and racial equality. Furthermore, it was such a game-changer, that it brought me out of my blog sabbatical because my thoughts are my way of having a voice in such a tough time for America. So, without further adieu, I present my musings on the book “The Secret Life of Bees' ' by Sue Monk Kidd.
With the recent social distancing and stay-in-place orders due to COVID-19 (curse you, Rona) I’ve had a plethora of opportunities to get creative in spending my free time. I am prone to getting some pretty gnarly depression when my brain is still for too long so I have to work really diligently to keep my brain moving in productive ways. One day I was looking through the podcast library on my iPhone and noticed that the author and sociologist Brene Brown had started her own podcast! Cue the cheering!! One of her early guests was a lovely lady named Sue Monk Kidd who had apparently written this book called “The Secret Life of Bees” that talked about bees (obviously), a black Mother Mary statue and the coexistence of a young white girl and a group of black female beekeepers. The conversation between Brene and Sue was POWERFUL. They talked about the importance of understanding hardship and being present when life is really, really hard. They talked about recognizing the higher power in our lives and how that can change the course forever. They talked about so many things and honestly I can’t remember most of them, but I DO remember how the episode made me FEEL. I was moved.
Fast forward a couple weeks and I was out thrifting (Hallelujah, I could be in public) and there was “The Secret Life of Bees” staring right at me from the shelf of paperback books. I snatched it up and made a promise to myself that I would get back on my comfort bus of reading fiction to curb my crazy. What an amazing journey I was about to embark.
The book takes place in South Carolina in the heart of the era of racial segregation in the year 1964. Times are tough and Lily Owens exists in a realm of poverty, grief and abuse by her father. One day she makes the decision to follow a prompting to run away and search for the better life. She, along with her nanny Rosaleen, set off on an adventure to find a place that sells honey with a label with a black Mother Mary on it. Lily is convinced that if she can find this bee farm who believes in a black Mother Mary she might find some answers about her own mother. Seems easy enough from a child’s standpoint, but Lily is met with challenge after challenge because she is a white child traveling with a black woman. Lily doens’t understand why everyone is so worked up about Rosaleen traveling with her because she’s always been there for Lily and loved her when her biological mother couldn’t. Finally Lily and Rosaleen show up at the bright pink residence of the “calendar sisters” August, May and June Boatwright. Lily conjures up a big fat lie about who she is and where they’ve come from and where they’re headed and before long she’s being shown to a cot in the bee house with Rosaleen and is allowed to stay.
Here is where I started marking the book and drawing hearts in the margins. Lily experiences some powerful inner monologues about these “calendar sisters” who are believing her story, giving her a safe place to stay and aren’t letting on that they might know what’s up. The first quote is referring to her father T. Ray and what he’s taught her to think about “colored women.” Lily thinks, “T. Ray did not think colored women were smart. Since I want to tell the whole truth, which means the worst parts, I thought they could be smart, but not as smart as me, me being white. Lying on the cot in the honey house, though, all I could think was August is so intelligent, so cultured and I was surprised by this. That’s what let me know I had some prejudice buried inside me.” SPOT ON. Somewhere along the way there has been some kind of notion that the color of a person’s skin translates to their ability to use their brain. I’m here to tell ya, this is RIDICULOUS. We all have brains in our head and we all have the right to use them. What the reader soon discovers is August is the epitome of kind, strong and wise and the last thing Lily worries about is her race.
A few pages later the conversation switches sides and Lily overhears August and her sister June talking about Lily’s obvious skin tone color. June says, “Why don’t you just ask her point blank what kind of trouble she’s in?” August says, “Everything in time. The last thing I want is to scare her off with a lot of questions. She’ll tell us when she is ready. Let’s be patient.” June says, “But, she’s white, August.” Lily continues in her thoughts by saying, “This was a great revelation -- not that I was white but that it seemed like June might not want me here because of my skin tone. I hadn’t known this was possible -- to reject people for being white.” I love both of these quotes because it shows the converse struggle that all the characters experienced while they tried to sort out their emotions about their differences. On one hand there was this expectation of superiority, but then on the other hand there was this dire need for safety. How many times so we wrestle with a similar battle? Who to trust, how to trust and the ever-looming “what ifs.” I’ll be the first to raise my hand and admit that I struggle with this deeply at times.
The next group of paragraphs had A LOT of hearts and underlining. Lily begins to work alongside August as an apprentice beekeeper and this allows for a lot of question and answer conversations. Lily is an inquisitive, blunt child and one day she asks her what is up with the bright pink paint on the front of the main house. August explains to Lily the decision for “Carribean Pink” was an effort to cheer their sister May’s heart. Lily replies, “all this time I just figured you liked pink.” She [August] laughed again. “You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. LIke the color of the house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart -- now that matters. The whole problem with people is….they know what matters, but they don’t CHOOSE it. You know how hard that is Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” Phew. I’ll pause for you to read that again. My figurative flood gates opened with this one. What matters? What if the thing or person that matters most is a damn difficult choice to make and might not be the most popular opinion with our peers? Will we decide to do it or will we succumb to the crowd and go the other way risking the sadness of someone important to us? Depending on the day, that answer isn’t always the right answer in my world and I’m working on it.
Toward the end of the book, Lily has a powerful awakening in finding herself, recognizing her roots and accepting what she can’t change. Lily’s ability to love has been tarnished with guilt, abuse and sadness and at this point in the book she finally gets it. August says to Lily, “whatever it is that keeps widening your heart, that’s Mary, too, not only the power inside you but the love. And when you get down to it, Lily, that’s the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love -- but to PERSIST in love.”
We HAVE to persist in love. Humanity needs us to be kind. The vulnerable need us to SPEAK UP and defend when they can’t do it. We are well past the time to argue and far beyond the time to sit down.
The moral of the story: You have brains in your head, a beating heart in your body and so does everyone else. They deserve your persistence in love just as much as you deserve theirs.
Happy reading, my amazing, geeky lovelies!
-R
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