The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (2014)
I was properly skeptical about this book to begin with, but the story—and I think the historical fact of it all—ultimately won me over. I saw this book referred to as “suburban Mom novel” (maybe it is with that Oprah stamp on the cover) which I thought was an unfair slight for a book I think could illuminate so much about life in the South in the 19th century, and about abolitionist and women’s right’s history. It also makes me realize my own prejudices about reading “women’s books” (snobby snob snob) which I fear will be overly gushy or thin or poorly written. Let’s face it. Women’s (and others) stories are just as legitimate as men’s, but I’m buying into a cultural bias that is stupid and demeaning. And when I do, I miss out on my sister’s and other people’s stories, stories that help me feel life as I haven’t lived it and broaden my idea of what it is to be a female/or other/ in this time, or another.
Okay, with that laid out, I wanted to share some thoughts:
Especially as I neared the end of the book, I began to feel frustrated with the seeming thinness of Handful/Hetty's story and character development compared to Sarah Grimke’s. The book is split between their two perspectives (Handful's account as a slave and Sarah's narrative as a wealthy white Southern belle), swapping back and forth throughout. However, this made complete sense when I read Kidd's wonderfully thorough historical notes, where she outlined the fictions and delineates her source material. Of course Grimké is graced with a more rich history—there are a wealth of accounts, a rich historical account, her own correspondence and writing, and a truly outstanding life story to contend with, while “Handful” is a construction, written into a narrative for symmetry and authorial purpose.
What I found so telling is that Kidd based the characters on an interaction she discovered where Sarah was given a slave girl on her eleventh birthday (that sentence pains me to relate, and it’s a feeling I had when I started this book, that I just didn’t want to read about this subject matter, why put myself through this tale of pain, repression, tragedy, etc.). Sarah taught the girl to read, they were both punished for the offense, and then it seems that the young slave girl passed away. Writing that breaks my heart again. Because that is the real story, and not the nice neat narrative that Kidd creates.
I did like that Sarah was not the white savior in the book, that the ending shows Handful’s agency instead, and her realization of her own destiny. But it also felt hollow and a little empty, and the details above relate why. I imagined if the book had been written simply with long silences and empty pages where Handful’s voice should have been, but I understand Kidd’s attempt to build out her experience, the urgency to try and give a revolutionary experience to this brave little girl. Because there were brave girls, boys, women and men who withstood the travesty, indignity, brutal injustice of slavery, and like Handful, claimed their self-hood, resisted in different ways, and Handful’s story stands in for theirs.
I loved how the book made me more interested in abolitionist history, and in learning more about pioneering women like the Grimké’s. I also became really interested in the Quaker faith, oddly enough, and definitely want to explore quilting and storytelling through piecework. And I like how this book pressed against some of my own intellectual blind spots. Sometimes I just don’t want to read certain books—they feel like medicine—but then, ironically, those same books are the ones I return to over and over (What is the What? comes to mind as an example). I’m glad to say that this book didn’t taste like medicine going down—it was compelling, and moving, and oh how I cried when reading the passage about the A.M.E. Church, understanding anew the deep, brutal wound that occurred this year (hearts with those families who suffered loss). [I guess I will admit here that I cry when I read, I laugh when I read, and I can deeply feel the highs and lows of (well-written) books.]
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