If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

When an idea for a novel begins to form it can be the seed of any experience imagined or rooted in reality that brings the full body of the work to fruition. For Sue Monk Kidd, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees, it was a combination of her own life experience and her vivid imagination that brought to life the plight of a young Caucasian girl in Civil Rights era South Carolina to take up with her African American nanny in search of self-love and belonging after the death of her mother.

While the book is not autobiographical, Monk Kidd did grow up in the hostility of 1960’s Georgia. She says of the time, “It was a time I think when it was just very volatile and very vivid and I remember it deeply…I was an adolescent in 1964, I was around Lily’s age so I made her that age for a reason. And it was a time when I too was broken open and became aware of the segregation around me, the vast racial divide, the enormous injustice and I think, ‘How did this happen?’”

A time period so rich in history and yet so raw with emotion takes time to come to harvest before it can be shared with a new generation. That ripening period took nearly 30 years and first began to solidify in anecdotes she shared with her husband, then becoming a short story in 1993 before maturing to a full-blown published literary work in 2002. In discussing the path of the story and Monk Kidd’s hope for the work, she said “I could hardly see it published, so I think that it was not in my imagination when I was writing. I was just hoping to be true to the story. This is a story I felt like I was born to write and I wanted to tell. I just wanted to be true to it and hope somebody published it. The fact that it got made into a movie is astonishing to me.”

There are many reasons for Monk Kidd’s surprise, but the strength of the novel isn’t be one of them as she also revealed,”This novel was optioned [for film] early…before it was actually published”. However, as every great writer who knows the market as well as the craft she explains, “I really felt like it would probably never happen. That it wouldn’t become a movie because there are a lot of books that are optioned, [yet] so few end up on the screen.” Most think that having a book adapted for film is the ultimate dream, but Monk Kidd explains the risk very few writers think about, “…I felt like it was a risk I was willing to take because I believe in the story and I thought that this story could find a lighter audience and a different audience than those that would read the book–a completely difference audience. I don’t know but it might become popular in a different way.”

A great risk indeed, as the buzz surrounding the movie has broadened the author’s exposure despite the book’s previous international acclaim and awards. Beginning her professional career as a nurse then a non-fiction freelancer, The Secret Life of Bees was not her first work. Monk Kidd has written several books and won several awards since, including The Mermaid Chair which won the 2005 Quill Award for General Fiction and was produced as a made-for-television Lifetime movie and Firstlight, a collection of the author’s early spiritual and inspirational writings.  Aside from her literary publicity travels, Sue Monk Kidd is a Writer in Residence at The Sophia Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. Sue’s next release Traveling with Pomegranates, which is due out in 2009, is a mother-daughter travel memoir co-authored with her daughter Ann.

Before going into the drugstore, Director Gina Prince-Bythewood tapped her young actor on the shoulder, “Jennifer, whatever you do, don’t hit anyone.” Confused, the Oscar-award winning actor of Dream Girls, Jennifer Hudson walked into the North Carolina drugstore unsure what would happen next or why she would need such a warning.

The unique telling of life’s universal themes of love and belonging in 1964’s racially turbulent south within Sue Monk Kidd’s 2002 New York Times bestseller The Secret Life of Bees easily seeped into the movie’s preparation in much the same way honey seeped through the walls of the author’s childhood bedroom. While improvisation and research are not unusual preparatory measures for performing a period piece such as this, the exercises Prince-Bythewood developed exposed some of her youngest cast members to the mindset of South Carolina in 1964. Knowing her casts’ lack of personal connection to or personal reference of that time, the director had to move past just exposing them to the music and clothing of the generation. As Prince-Bythewood summarized, “Jennifer was coming up on the Oscars then…and just thinking of how I’m going to bring her down to where Rosaleen was, no education, she’s working as a nanny, she’s invisible, this is 1964 and she had nobody to talk to about that; I mean we weren’t alive at that time so I had to do something dramatic.”

             In a time where pure racial hatred has given way to tolerance, acceptance and sometimes racist passivity, the director constructed an exercise that brought the everyday race relations of 1964 into the cast’s own mental and emotional framework. Bythewood sent southern-born I Am Sam star, Dakota Fanning and Chicagoan Jennifer Hudson on a shopping excursion at a drugstore and diner. It wasn’t until Hudson witnessed the polite service Fanning received that is afforded to everyone today and contrasted it to her own experience of being ignored and insulted with racial epithets in the same mock-scenario, did she come to realize that racism was an outward expression of a belief system that was a commonly accepted form of human interaction for the time period.

             Throughout interviews with the young actors at the faith-based press junket, amazement at the race relations of the time period were echoed repeatedly regardless of everyone’s familiarity with Rosa Parks’ story, stories of lynchings and the videos of African Americans beaten in the streets with batons and hosed down like wild dogs at the hands of the police during racial protests. When asked about the seemingly pervasive amazement at 1960’s race relations, one of the youngest male cast members, Tristan Wilds of 90201 and The Wire commented, “…you don’t really understand what goes on unless you go through it yourself…” One of the older male actors, Nate Parker of The Great Debaters said it best when EDC Creations CEO and Literary Publicist Ella Curry asked about research and breaking from the ’60s character when the work was done, “We’re still in the Civil Rights movement. The only thing that changes is the clothes and the hair.” Two completely different perspectives from young African American men no more 10 years apart speak to the depths of discovery The Secret Life of Bees brings to all who encounter it.

On the surface, Sue Monk Kidd’s 2002 New York Times best seller The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, a young teen-aged Caucasian girl learning the lessons of love and family in the Civil Rights era of South Carolina 1964. Adapted to the screen and ready for a mid-October 2008 release, the preponderance of African American supporting characters enduring the treachery of the South during the Civil Rights era would lead those unfamiliar with the story to believe it’s another “We Shall Overcome” redemption saga.

As Director and Screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood put it when Ella Curry, Literary Publicist and CEO of EDC Creations asked about the book’s appeal for a movie adaptation, the director said, “It starts with the story. I wanted to tell this story…I knew that the story and the themes were universal.”

Indeed the themes of family, community, respect, and spiritual awakening in The Secret Life of Bees applies to everyone.

 While these concepts have been covered in many literary works, the origin of this story is like no other. Rarely is the era of Civil Rights explored from the perspective of a Caucasian teenager, Lily Owens played by Sam I Am star Dakota Fanning, who is an outward African American sympathizer. So outward are Lily’s connections to the African American southern community that she leaves her abusive father after the death of her mother and discovers her life’s lessons amid her African American nanny played by Dream Girls Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson, and the bee-farming African American Boatwright sisters who board them. The story belongs to the Boatwright sisters as much as it belongs to Lily as they survive that turbulent time together. Prince-Bythewood continues, “…to bring the Boatwright sisters to life, like we just don’t see women like that and I wanted to be the one to be able to do that. I felt it was a gift.”

The real irony comes in the fact that these interracial relationships and the damage of racism that is felt across color lines were not solely drawn up from the depths of the author’s imagination. When Sue Monk Kidd was asked how she came up with the story’s perspective, she replied, “I was pulling from both imagination and memory. I grew up in a small town in Georgia so I came of age in the ’60s…It was a time I think when it was just very volatile and very vivid and I remember it deeply.” While Lily’s plight is not autobiographical to Monk Kidd’s experience, the emotion, the symbolism as well as certain occurrences like bees making honey in the walls of her childhood bedroom is true to her memory.

The Secret Life of Bees shakes up the perspectives that surround the Civil Rights Era demonstrating the dangers and injustices that existed for many daring to blur the color line in search of self-acceptance and belonging.

In general, I don’t consider myself a movie-hyper. As a matter of fact, I tend to shy away from movies that get too much press out of the fear that I will be severely disappointed come opening night. It’s the reason why I have not seen Men In Black, Independence Day, any of the Lord of the Rings or the more recent Star Wars movies.

I did break down and see a few Harry Potter films and I saw Hitch, The Pursuit of Happyness and Hancock. (I had to throw those in so you don’t think I’m a WIll Smith hater. I’m not. He is a good actor. I almost saw Ali–almost.) Ever notice how many of the most hyped movies are WIll Smith movies? I loved him in Pursuit and Hancock. HItch was funny although I think his sidekick from the King of Queens really hijacked that movie. But in general, if there’s too much buzz, I tend to run in the other direction.

Anyway, there is just something different about The Secret Life of Bees, written by Sue Monk Kidd. Despite the fact that my publicity girl, Ella Curry over at EDC Creations obtained some killer audio at a press junket she attended for the movie and the fact that I busted my “arse” to write a slew of articles based on those audios, I really think it is a timely movie and delivers a message in a way we don’t see everyday.

Not to mention a white author successfully writing about a slew of black characters during the Civil Rights era from the perspective a little white girl and doing so with great style intrigues me. Yes, this movie is a literary adaptation. It also has many multicultural themes, so it is right up my alley. Yet, it’s sad how we often don’t hear about a great book until someone decides to make a movie out of it. This is one of those books.

So what am I warning you about? Well, I will be posting a number of the articles I wrote about the book, the movie and its award-winning cast right here at Sable Lit Reviews, in preparation for the movie’s release this Friday.

Don’t worry, each article will touch on a different theme, character or incident in the making of the movie and you won’t miss out on any book reviews or haunted reviews either. I just ask that you really consider this movie when you are making your weekend plans. The cast took a serious paycut to make it because movies like these are not made as frequently as they should. The hype surrounding someone making a movie for a good cause and to add to the literary discourse of society? Now that I can get behind!