BOOK REVIEW
Literary Speaking
The Invention of Wings
By Sue Monk Kidd
Reviewed by Kathy Jacobs, Director, Yankton Community Library
Over
the
years, I
have come
to regard Sue Monk
Kidd as one of my favorite
historical fiction authors. In
her most recent book, The Invention of
Wings, she does not disappoint with her poignant telling of a story of
two sisters, daughters of an aristocratic family in Charleston, South
Carolina who speak out against slavery and the dehumanizing of
both slaves and women when slavery was at its height prior to the
Civil War.
At age seven, Sarah Grimke is given a slave girl named Hetty
Handful for her birthday. Sarah promptly rejects this gift, stating that
people are not property that one person can give another. Her
parents do not listen to Sarah and both she and Hetty have no voice
in the matter. Sarah secretly begins teaching Hetty to read and, over
the years, their relationship develops .
A parallel runs throughout the story of Sarah being a free white
person who is chained to her family’s belief in slavery and, when she
becomes a young woman, the chains that women endured in being
property of their husbands and the rules of society. Sarah is also a
slave.
As the story unfolds, Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, young
ladies of piety and gentility who moved in the elite circles of society
until, acting upon their personal convictions that slavery was
inhumane, were forced to break from their family, their religion, their
homeland, and their traditions, becoming
exiles and eventually pariahs in Charleston.
Long before others were writing about the
emancipation of slaves, Sarah and Angelina
wrote and spoke about racial equality, an
idea that was radical even among
abolitionists.
While this book is fiction, it is closely
based upon Sarah and Angelina’s real lives.
There are many details included that are
based upon the history of the Old South.
Kidd tells the story in such a way that even
though I have read many books on this
topic, I “saw” slavery in a new light and
marveled at the heroic way the sisters and
Hetty lived their lives. This book is a must
read for anyone who is interested in slavery,
women’s rights, and our country’s history.
Kidd writes that she was inspired to write
this book by the words of Professor Julius Lester: “History is not just
facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat
history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”
The library has Sue Monk Kidd’s other books Traveling with
Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story and When the Heart Waits:
Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions, both nonfiction; The
Mermaid Chair and The Secret Life of Bees, both fiction.
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HERVOICE MAY/JUNE 2014 v 17