It is hard to believe that we are entering October and Fall has arrived. This has been a great year for reading, and this month's book is no exception. We missed Janie and Denise. Janie's daughter is here celebrating her birthday with her parents, and Denise is recovering from surgery. Arnora returns to us fresh from her trip to England and Ireland with her brother. Carla G just returned from a trip to Hawaii, where she and Randy renewed their vows!
In the past, we read Sue Monk Kidd's book, The Secret Life of Bees, and it became a book club favorite.
The movie was also one of the few that I thought was a good movie adaptation.
The Invention of Wings is a story told by two narrators who are living parallel lives. They are living in the same house, but their lives could not be more different.
Sara Grimke has just turned 11. She is living in the plantation home of her revered father, a judge in Charleston, SC, and her southern belle mother. She is finally being transferred from the nursery to her own bedroom. With this promotion comes the gift of a personal lady's maid. Handful, a black slave of the Grimkes, is brought into the house to sleep on the floor outside of Sara's room and tend to her every need. Sara is despondent at this news and begs her mother to take back the gift. Even at this young age, Sara has witnessed the treatment of their slaves, and she wants no part of it. When her mother refuses, Sara, a precocious and sharp-minded girl, writes an emancipation letter and leaves it on her father's desk. This is the beginning of a story of two southern sisters, Sara and Angelina, and a slave girl, as they navigate the road through abolition and feminism leading up to the Civil War.
Sara and Angelina Grimke were two of the first women to join the cause for the abolition of slavery, and they also fought for women's right to vote. They came just ahead of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and eventually, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Paul.
Sue Monk Kidd adeptly tells this moving story of the women and their lives in both Charleston and Philadelphia. It is in Philadelphia that the Grimkes joined the Quaker Church, which was opposed to slavery. This book was the first time I remember knowing that many people who wanted to free the slaves did not want to give women the right to vote. And, many in the suffragette movement were not abolitionists.
I first learned of the Myth that Africans had wings and could fly from Toni Morrison's book, Song of Solomon. Supposedly, African's lost their wings when they were brought to America as slaves. What remains are their shoulder blades, where wings should be. In the last two years, I have read four books that reference this story.
Our November book is Starling House, and our December book is Winter Solstice.
The Holiday Season is upon us!
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