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01/27/2005: "Fiction Writing - The Secret Life of Bees"

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Penguin, 2001, has got to be one of the best illustrations of the fact that no race has a monopoly on kindness and humanity and, if anything, some races seem filled with more hatred than others. Picture the simplest kind of existence, that of living off the produce of a farm, and picture a little girl coming to this place with not other home to go to. The farmers, a group of black women, take in the girl, a small white child, and show her the home she has never had. It’s the kind of book that helps you to feel the Southern ethic in its best face and shows you how evil can be conquered in the simplest of ways. I listened to it and thoroughly enjoyed the characterizations and, if I must admit, a remembrance of to the folks of my childhood.