For anyone that might not know, The Secret Life of Bees is the story of a fourteen year old young white girl living in the south in the mid 1960s. She has an abusive father, and a mother that died when she was very young. She runs away to live with some Black women.
In the movie, they tried to make Dakota Fanning seem so sad and hurt in her life. And I felt a little sympathy for her. She has much more maturity than the character Lily. Lily annoys me so many more times than I care to admit, and a lot of it had to do with the racial stereotypes.
Rosaleen wasn't young, beautiful Jennifer Hudson; she was a middle-aged, Mammy-esque figure to Lily. This brat didn't think that Rosaleen was at all intelligent, she would speak for the grown woman, and then after meeting August Boatwright she wants the rough-around-the-edges woman to be more cultured. Yes, that is the word that the writer used. In so many ways, the girl didn't see Rosaleen as a person. I think this might have been in part the style of the story, and not that the author has so narrow a mind, because she hints at the story of Rosaleen.
Lily is a character that falls firmly in the category of dramatico. Every little detail that she hears, she rolls around until she has another reason to feel bad for herself. Now, I'm not going to lie, Lily did have some issues in her life, but she sees herself as the center of the universe. So many times in the story, I want to shake the shit out of her, or backhand her into oblivion and tell her "Your life isn't that fucking bad!" Many (at least the ones centered on in the book) of her issues stem from the fact that the one person she wants in her world, her mother, isn't with her.
The Boatwright Sisters are a group of unmarried eccentric African-American women that keep bees and live in a pink house in South Carolina. There is August, May and June. All of these women are also significantly older than their acting counterparts. At one point, there was an April. but she isn't in the book. None of them had married, and they are known for using a particular picture of a Black Madonna as their emblem. These women are not like Rosaleen; they have beautiful things, and come from money neither of them had seen. August, the eldest of the sisters, is a mystical, intelligent, deep thinking woman; there are many things that hint something mystical underneath, although the author likes to counter this by trying to make it very realistic. June Boatwright is a headstrong cellist and teacher. She doesn't like Lily from the beginning, and has an unrequited lover. May is one of twins, and a sensitive child-like woman that has issues bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders.
There are other characters, including an intelligent, handsome chocolate love interest, but the biggest part of the book is around the relationship between the women.
Now, my problems with the book comes from Lily and her style of writing. She uses many metaphors, but sometimes it can be a bit too much. Then, it's Lily's ideas around Black people. There are times that she seems oblivious to the fact that the Black characters are humans, that they experience the same type of emotions that white people can. It can make me roll my eyes; the fact that this book is written by a white woman is totally obvious in the writing. I'm not sure how to explain it, but that's how it is. She doesn't write like someone like Olivia Cole, but she's alright.
The one thing that the author really spends a lot of interesting time on is the religion that the Boatwright sisters celebrate. It's a hybrid of Catholicism, Mary worship, ancestor worship and some pagan aspects as well. Lily takes this religion into her heart, and it helps heal her. The idea of the mother of Jesus taking the place in her life that she didn't have with her mother is part of her growth into a young woman.
I would honestly recommend this book to someone that enjoys bees, Black women, your Adolescent coming-of-age stories. This is definitely one of those books that you should read before you think of purchasing it.
Some fun upcoming posts:
I'm trying to get back to writing on this blog on a regular basis. I have another book that I'm reading, something that is really raising my eyebrows, but that I'm not going to spoil just yet. There is also some fiction that I want to put up as well.
