The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings

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The excellent way this story was written commemorates this part of history in such a way that many new generations of readers will get to learn about it. It is a story that has been told a million times before. The danger in that is that people disconnect, become apathetic, due to an overload. It is like a popular song being killed by too many times being played on the radio. The southern charm of the prose makes this a very good as well as informative read.

The author presents a warm, compassionate, picturesque story of a friendship that survived all the odds. Dec 12, Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing. This book is as good as people say it is! Given there must be at least 5, reviews of this book already I'm going to pick out a quote page , in which I felt this story took a major turn.

She'd immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she'd done was not a revolt, it was a baptism. The girls growing up during this period of history are especially very rich in quality. Jan 17, Katelyn rated it it was amazing Shelves: First off, before I get into the actual review, I think it's necessary to explain my history with the author, Sue Monk Kidd. When I was fourteen, I received a book recommendation from one of my mom's friends, which ended up being The Secret Life of Bees.

I was just at that age where books didn't fascinate me as much as when I was a little kid, and my book selection was getting increasingly pickier. As I was reading the book coming home from a trip to Mexico, I felt an overwhelming connection to First off, before I get into the actual review, I think it's necessary to explain my history with the author, Sue Monk Kidd. As I was reading the book coming home from a trip to Mexico, I felt an overwhelming connection to every single character.

Maybe it was that Lily was the same age I was at the time, and going through similar changes becoming a girl to a woman. I also found too many similarities with the character May and my grandmother, and still get emotional just thinking about her. The Secret Life of Bees is the first book that made me sob profusely, and to this date I am still very emotionally attached to the book.

I still have the original copy many years later, and I am so protective of my copy that not even my closest, dearest friends can borrow it. I would much rather buy such friends a brand new copy than let anyone touch mine. Plus, I had read reviews for both and neither came close to the praise The Secret Life of Bees accomplished. About a week ago, when I was researching books to do for my challenge, I came across an add on Goodreads for The Invention of Wings.

The book had only been printed for a couple of days, and had already been noticed by Oprah Winfrey and her Book Club 2. Reviews were coming in left and right praising Sue Monk Kidd and her incredible accomplishment. Cautious, I marked it as "to-read". Right before my surgery on Tuesday, I was aimlessly walking around the Duck Store the campus bookstore and there it was. Brand new, in mint condition. Something pulled me toward the book, even though it cost a little bit under a week's paycheck.

Sue Monk Kidd did not disappoint my expectations; if anything she exceeded them by flying colors. Based on the true story of abolitionist Sarah Grimke and her slave "Handful", the novel goes back and forth between the two women in the early nineteenth century. The first chapters start when both girls are 11 years old, with Handful being assigned as Sarah's personal slave, which even at the age of 11 Sarah knows is wrong.

As the girls grow up to lead very different lives, both endure loss, love or, supposed love in Sarah's case , life, and death. I had never heard about Sarah Grimke prior to the novel, and I wish that schools put as much emphasis into her history not only as an abolitionist, but as a feminist. Between Sarah and her sister Nina, the two started to pave the way for women's suffrage. I also really appreciate having Handful become as important in the novel as Sarah was, even though more people know about the true Sarah Grimke's life true life than the real Handful. While I didn't fall in love with the characters as much as I did in Secret Life of Bees, both of the leading characters are instant winners and deserve to be celebrated in the ingenious way Sue Monk Kidd portrays them.

I have a feeling this novel is going to be eaten up by OWN TV in a matter of years, as the book is just screaming to be a historical feature film. The events are exciting enough to be brought to life by a camera, and Sarah Grimke and all associated deserve to be important facets of American history. Well done, Sue Monk Kidd. You impressed me yet again. View all 5 comments.

Jan 07, Cher rated it liked it Shelves: While being well written and interesting enough to keep me engaged, this book was ultimately a let down and did not even come close to meeting the expectations that have been set by the hype surrounding it.

Unfortunately, the focus on their actions to 2. In actually, this is a rehashing of the evils of slavery and while the author illustrates the cruelty and unfathomable injustice that slaves endured, she does not bring anything new to the table. In the end, this was a fictional, heart-tugging story, but still a very typical book about slavery with no significantly unique qualities about it. In reality, Hetty actually died as a child shortly after being punished for learning how to read so her story is almost entirely the creative imaginings of the author. This read as a stereotypical novel that illustrates the cruel capability of mankind, but ultimately leaves you wanting more from the rushed and poorly developed segments that gave you a glimmer of hope regarding humanity.

The most interesting part of the book was actually the author's note, which goes into more detail about the sisters and what was factual from the novel. From the author's note: There was especially very little said about the Grimke's campaign for women's rights.

The beginning of the book in particular illustrated Sarah's struggle with realizing the limited options she would have as a woman. It was dissatisfying after that build-up to see very little development come later due to the author offering "only a telescoped look" of the push back Sarah received as an adult. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse. I have one mind for the master to see. I have another mind for what I know is me. There was a time in Africa the people could fly.

View all 6 comments. Nov 12, Sarah rated it it was amazing Shelves: At the age of 11, I owned a slave I couldn't free. This is a book primarily about two girls, both of who are trapped within lives that they cannot change, but who ultimately grow into extraordinary and inspirational women. The novel begins in Sarah Grimke is the daughter of Judge Grimke, and a middle child in a large family who form part of the aristocratic class of Charleston, South Carolina.

The Grimkes, like all other rich white families in the town, rely on slaves to sustain their l At the age of 11, I owned a slave I couldn't free. The Grimkes, like all other rich white families in the town, rely on slaves to sustain their lavish lifestyle. Each family member has their own slave who attends to their needs, and therefore at the age of 11, and despite her young conviction that it is wrong, Sarah finds herself in possession of a young slave girl, Hetty "Handful".

As Sarah grows into a young woman, and then into middle age, her convictions about slavery and rights for women never dim, often to great personal sacrifice. She is by no means a perfect character - her younger sister Nina seems closer to this - but it makes her even more interesting to read about. Handful is one of my favourite characters that I have come across lately. Through her, we feel keenly the injustices and cruelties dealt to the slaves in Charleston.

Her relationship with her mother, Charlotte, is colourfully depicted and touching. The stories of Sarah and Handful are equally compelling. Having their lives side-by-side in the novel, even when they are separated in distance, is an effective method of contrasting and comparing their circumstances. If you must err, do so on the side of audacity This phrase is one that Sarah applies to her life from a young age, but could just as well apply to Handful too.

Both are very likeable characters, who you root for throughout. The use of first person means their deepest dreams and thoughts are exposed to the reader. The emotions are raw and almost painful to read at times. The fact that these sort of things actually happened makes it all the more horrendous.

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The friendship between Sarah and Handful is never romanticised; it is always painfully aware of the distance between them that has been imposed by society. It is all the more compelling and touching for it. The bond between the women feels realistic throughout the book and is palpable throughout their various individual struggles. Whilst reading this book, I was unaware that it was based in fact, and the discovery of this through the author's note at the end has deepened its impression on me even further.

This is a book that speaks to your very soul, and which I feel will stay with me for a long time. I told her, "Course you're tired. You worked hard your whole life. That's all you did was work. Don't you remember I'm a slave and work hard. When you think of me, you say, she never belong to those people. She never belong to nobody but herself. Even at the age of 11 she can tell that slavery, owning somebody as if they were a thing, is wrong and she's not happy to 'receive' Handful as a birthday present and despite her attempts to say no, her mother is adamant. They've only ever known pain and hurt.

They're not allowed to leave, they're not allowed to do anything without permission, without being told to. They are objects to those people. I'm pretty sure most of you know what slavery means and why it's so wrong, or at least, know that black people back then were literally things, owned, humiliated, hurt and controlled by their owners. We can see as Sarah grows that she and Handful while they consider each other friends, they grow apart from each other, not in the sense of hostility but they just do.

But Sarah never once forgets the promise she made to Charlotte, that she'd one day get Handful freed. Sarah and her younger sister, Nina, they're both against her parents and siblings views and they are not afraid or ashamed to say so. Sarah, later, embraces Quakerism and their views of the emancipation of the slaves and so does her younger sister.

As they grew older, they began writing pamphlets and they became widely known and largely controversial for not only their feelings towards slavely but also towards the fact that they advocate the equality of women. So, this book is not only about slavery, it's about the emancipation of both women and the slaves. As Handful once said to Sarah: For you, it's the other way around. Sarah managed to make something of herself at last and she found something she's good at and something she can take pride in doing. In this book you'll see the hardship the slaves were put under and the wretched conditions they had to live through.

But also you'll see the disease of opression, of being told what you should believe, of being told that you're no good for anything and being afraid of standing up to those who doubt you and of the inability of doing anything other than what was considered normal and typical of a person to do. You could not breakaway, could not make something, whatever that was, of yourself without taking and being granted permission to do so.

She's an incredible author, with the power to make you understand what slavery is, not only the slavery of the body but also that of the mind, the one we sometimes inflict on ourselves. This powerful novel begins in and follows the life of two girls into womanhood; neither of whom follow the path proscribed for them by convention and the world they are born into. Sarah Grimke is the daughter of a wealthy and influential family. On her eleventh birthday, Sarah is presented with Handful, the slave daughter o This powerful novel begins in and follows the life of two girls into womanhood; neither of whom follow the path proscribed for them by convention and the world they are born into.

On her eleventh birthday, Sarah is presented with Handful, the slave daughter of Charlotte, as her very own waiting maid — a gift she is unwilling to accept but unable to refuse.

For Sarah is not the average, dutiful daughter. She is desperate for more than the basic education doled out to girls, in order to make them good wives and mothers; being taught piano, drawing and needlepoint. In a sense, both Sarah and Handful are prisoners of their situation. Sarah bound by duty and convention, her ambitions thwarted and her desires limited. Handful, obviously, is in the most dreadful position — having no control over her own life, she can be literally bought and sold, given away as a gift and her world is bound by her owners.

Her mother, Charlotte, is desperate to escape and plots and plans to buy the freedom of her and her daughter. Meanwhile, Sarah rebels in her own ways and teaches Handful to read; illegal in slave owning states. Based on the life of real people, this novel follows the story of Sarah, her sister Nina, Charlotte and Handful. There is much disappointment, pain and tragedy, as both Sarah and Handful struggle to take control of their world. The author makes sure you are always aware that, no matter what befalls Sarah, she, at least, has some control over her destiny. Yet, it is the strength of these women, their courage and conviction, that is your overwhelming feeling at the end of this striking and rewarding read.

Sarah Grimke was a woman who recognised her failings and weaknesses, but her work as a female abolitionist and her writing as an early feminist is something which should be admired and known. In this novel, the author gives both Sarah and Handful believable and courageous voices. This book was provided by the publisher for review.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

Mar 14, Diane Chamberlain rated it it was amazing. My favorite book in recent months. Firstly let me apologise for the length of this review! For her birthday her parents gifted her with ten year old Hetty Handful to be her waiting maid. But it was to be. And so a strange and unique relationship formed betwe Firstly let me apologise for the length of this review!

Handful was the daughter of Charlotte who had been with the Grimke family for a long time. Charlotte was an excellent seamstress and was teaching Handful all she knew. Charlotte had a mind of her own which would get her into trouble on many occasions; Handful was very like her mauma… When Sarah was twelve, her younger sister Angelina Nina was born.

READERS GUIDE

And never, ever challenge a man. As change, aggression, cruelty and rumblings of discontent hovered, the Grimke family was involved, from slave through to owner. Handful suffered greatly, enduring much; but she had a grim determination which kept her going. On the outside she was the perfect slave — yessum, yessum — but on the inside she was something else entirely.

And what a devastating and terrible history for Charleston and America to have. Based on fact the majority of the characters in this book are real people — Sarah and Angelina Grimke are historical figures of note, being the first women to strike out and be heard in the fight for the abolition of slavery, and the rights of women.

Nov 01, Lela rated it it was amazing. Excellent mix of fiction and the real.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd – review

This well-written book brings slavery to the personal level and depicts just how cruel, ingrained, and tightly grasped it was in a large part of our country. Whites, particularly Southern whites, for the most part didn't even want to admit these slaves were human because then they might have to face exactly what they were doing to hold on to their way of life. And, anyone who deviated from this blindness was ostracized or worse. Speaking out and "mixing" br Excellent mix of fiction and the real.

Speaking out and "mixing" brought its own extreme difficulties especially if you were a woman. The book is set just before the Civil War and big things are starting to change - terrifying! This is a great book to read for a grounding in the abolition movement and the beginnings of the cry for the equality of women! Dec 19, Chrissie rated it liked it Shelves: I KNOW my emotional response to this book. I liked it, so three stars it has to get. What is it that has prevented me from giving it more?

Please read the above book summary. I am not going to repeat all of that. I assume you know that this book is based on the two real-life Grimke sisters that fought for the Abolitionist and Women's Rights movement in the s and s.

The book is well researched. It has an excellent epilogue that in detail specifies what is and is not fictional. Many of the characters really did exist and they are woven into the fictional events. It is the fictional story that gives me trouble. In reality Sarah Grimke was given a personal slave when she was eleven, Hetty of ten years , but this slave soon died. Here she lives on and is used by the author to show us the horrors of slave life in Charleston, South Carolina. It is this fictional story that doesn't ring true to me. There are cups of tea on roof tops, things like that, which create a feel good story that people so love And I will not talk of the ending; how realistic is that?

The theme of slave quilting is pretty too. Is it a gimmick to tie the story together? Of course, but there is no discussion of why so many people refused to abandon it. Nothing of the economic basis for slavery in the South is discussed. Am I too much of a non-fiction book lover for this? Should I give up on historical fiction completely? The narration by Jenna Lamia who voices Sarah's story and Adepero Oduye who speaks Hetty's, the slave girl's story, are distinct.

I like how each uses their own appropriate vocabularies. Sarah is genteel, clearly from the upper crust, the slave owning class; her speech and choice of words well reflect this. Hetty's is exactly as expected, that of a slave's, with a diction that matches. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. I don't remember how old I was when I discovered some of the more harrowing chapters of human history — the Holocaust and American slavery — but I do remember convincing my young self that I would have been brave had I lived in those times.

I would have stood up for humanity and against injustice. Later, I was not quite as zealous or stalwart. I considered such acts with a keener sense of how it felt to be ostracized, and a deeper understanding of how much I wanted to belong — or survive. And I found myself contemplating those past selves — the girls and women I've been over the course of my life — while reading Sue Monk Kidd's newest novel, The Invention of Wings.

Sarah despises slavery, even at that early age, and out of principle attempts to reject the gift. Kidd has fleshed out mountains of research — facts, figures, dates, letters, and articles — into a believable and elegantly rendered fictional first person account of Sarah's life. But though Hetty was real, her story here is almost entirely fabricated — and perhaps because she is mostly a product of Kidd's imagination, Hetty's character seems truly inspired.

She maintains a spirited independence in her internal life. She survives cruelty and servitude by creating rituals and touchstones that she imbues with meaning and power. She both benefits and is injured by her complicated relationship with Sarah, who can neither free her nor protect her when she truly needs it. She could speak and do as she wished.

Sarah, on the other hand, came with a large historical script, and that turned out to be one of my biggest challenges. In the beginning, I had a hard time letting her venture outside factual borders. The longer she was cooped up by the facts, the quieter she got. Finding it was all about loosening it. I needed to let her veer off script. I had to find Sarah in my imagination and in history. Doing so brought her alive for me. What was the process of writing the novel like for you?

How did you go about your research?

What did you mean? It took four years to write The Invention of Wings -three and a half years of writing, following six months of research. I spent a lot of protracted time sitting at the computer screen just contemplating the story, letting my imagination browse, trying to connect little dots, allowing ideas and revelations to come to me.

Plus, I was constantly stopping to look up something in a book-what sort of mourning dress did women wear in ? What book titles would be on a library shelf in ? What were the emancipation laws in South Carolina? I would easily spend an entire day tinkering with the prose on a single page. The way into the early nineteenth century, of course, is through an awful lot of research.

My husband joked I spent more time in the nineteenth century than I did in the twenty-first.

The Invention of Wings Reader’s Guide

My aim was to create a world for the reader to enter, one as richly textured, tangible, and authentic as I could make it. I read and read, filling up five big notebooks with details and ideas. I hung them in my study, using them to map the flow of events. I also made lots of field trips, visiting libraries, museums, historical societies, and historic houses, all of which I might have enjoyed a little too much because I finally had to make myself stop reading, mapping, and traipsing about and start writing.

Maybe because the story had to accommodate such a sweeping amount of time. Maybe because it had two different narrators whose stories needed to be a match for one another, whose voices had to be distinct, and whose journeys had to be synchronized. Most daunting, though, was the notion of writing from the mind, heart, and persona of an enslaved person. I wanted to create Handful in a way that was convincing and respectful. One that I kept on my desk as I wrote this novel simply said: Be fearless on the page. I often paused to read it. It caused me to at least try. What does that moment in the novel mean to you?

As I read through this long and detailed list, I was shocked to come upon the names of seventeen slaves. They were inserted between a Brussels staircase carpet and eleven yards of cotton and flax. I read their names, their ages, the roles they performed-coachman, cook, waiting maid, washer, house servant, seamstress, etc.

There were four children included, ages eight, six, four, and three months. The eight-year-old was named Ben, the same as my grandson. Their mother was Bess, age thirty. The moment hit me close to the bone, in part because of how real and close these human beings suddenly seemed, but also because of the sheer banality and acceptability of listing them as possessions among the carpets and cloth.

Here was not just our human capacity for cruelty, but also our ability to render it invisible. How do such things happen? How do we grow comfortable with the particulars of evil? How are we able to normalize it? How does evil gather when no one is looking? The Invention of Wings is about several simultaneous struggles for freedom.

Handful and Sarah are both imprisoned in their own particular way. As a white woman in South Carolina in the early s, even a privileged one, Sarah had a life that was vastly limited. Women had few rights, not to property or even to their own children. Essentially, they were the property of their husbands, and their purpose in life was to marry, have children, and live their lives within the domestic sphere.

And yet their lack of freedom could not compare to the horrific subjugation of enslaved women whose entire lives were determined by their owners and whose suffering was infinitely worse. I felt like the primary thing I had to do was never lose sight of that. Finding their freedom had to do with liberating themselves internally, discovering a sense of self, and the boldness to express that self. The question then became how to emancipate herself physically. What needed to transpire inside of her to bring her to the crucial moment of risking everything? Sarah was steeped in family and cultural expectations for women, which crashed over and over against her ravenous intellect and hunger for an education, her passion for a vocation, her indomitable moral compass, and her courage-qualities that came to be reflected in her silver fleur-de -is button, an object she would lose and refind, figuratively, many times.

Turning loose of the sea rope, to which all the women grasp, she strides off on her own into the waves. Floating alone in the water, far from the tether, became her own baptism into her apartness and independence. It was a small beginning.

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