The Secret Life of Bees

I liked this book okay as I was reading it, but suspected the real power of the story would hit me at the ending, that the book was building toward something. Sometimes books are like that. This IS how the book worked for me – when I looked back on the story.

I enjoyed the characters, and the idea of finding a mother/a self-nurturing side inside yourself. I think there are the mothers we have in the most literal sense and then the archetypal mother – sometimes the two are interwoven and other times ... not. The important thing is that it is deeply human to crave the a deeper, unconditional, life-giving, encompassing love we associate with mothers.

When I was a teen, my mother broke my heart, and I remember crying about wanting my mother, but in that moment I didn't mean her, I meant someone who would give me what I lacked, who would help heal the hurt caused by my actual mother's limitations.

Eh, I don't know.

This is the second book I've read by this (white) author, and both contained prominent black characters going through significant hardships at the hands of white people, and I have to confess I feel conflicted. Of course people should be allowed to write about characters of different races from their own. Still, I can't help but feel like people of color are the best people to write about slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and civil rights until their voices are given as much weight as the voices of white authors.