The Secret Life of Bees and the Problems of Race

I have to say that since embarking on this project I am trying to be a bit more selective in the things I read, not all the time, but looking at lists of the best books is making me a little more discerning, at least when I go to the library. This book came up on the additional bucket list of books by women writers (on Bookriot) and I saw it at the library so I thought I’d give it a go. 

Like many of the books on the list this is not particularly literary, although I would have to say I thought it was nicely written with some good imagery. I particularly loved the scenes of the religious ceremonies of the Daughters of Mary complete with their fantastic hats.  The main narrator (Lily) had an appealing narrative voice and I liked the characters, particularly the three sisters. 

It is the kind of book I would like to give to a girl of about the same age as Lily as I think it’s easy to read and contains some rather well-put homespun wisdom about themes such as forgiveness, the role of the mother and about becoming a woman. The overall message is one of hope and the ability to reconcile yourself with past mistakes.

Reading the reviews I see that although the majority of reviews were positive, criticism was levelled at the author for her portrayal of T. Ray as being wholly negative, for the black characters being stereotypes and for the ending. For the first point, I would argue that the portrayal of T. Ray is not that important, for the first place he is portrayed that way because we are viewing him through Lily’s eyes, by the end she is starting to understand that he behaves that way towards her because he is punishing her for her mother leaving him (and probably for her role in killing her mother) and that actually, by removing himself from her life rather than forcing her to return home with him he is somehow showing some sort of care for her, however, as a fourteen year old girl she is probably not going to give a balanced account of the man who is abusing her, particularly as she practically hero-worships her mother.  In the second place, he is acting as a catalyst to the plot, perhaps he is a one-dimensional catalyst, but the book wouldn’t work without her deciding both to leave her home and to stay away from it, and this also ties in with the ending in that there is no tearful reunion with her father, but at the same time he doesn’t drag her away from the sisters or Rosaleen, Lily is where she feels she belongs with people who care about her. 

I found the question of whether she used stereotypes more difficult to answer. I am aware that I don’t read nearly enough writing by PoCs and I am only starting to analyse media portrayals of ethnic minorities and disabled people. I did a lit theory course on post colonialism, but it wasn’t that in depth. I could do with educating. 

I read an interesting article on Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids Books (by Mitali Perkins). She asked the following questions:

Are the non white characters too good to be true?

The author of this article cites The Secret Life of Bees as an example of a book where the author is overcompensating by portraying characters as ‘a wise elder dispensing advice’ that assists a white character to attain spiritual and moral enlightenment.

How and why does the author define race?

SMK has chosen to set this book in the 1960s during a time of racial tension which has an impact on several of the characters of the book.  The incident of Rosaleen getting attacked moves the story forward, forcing Lily to leave home, although this would have worked equally if Lily had had some other incident that made her leave, albeit she would probably not have gone with Rosaleen, whose role within the book seems to be more as acting as some sort of conscious to Lily rather than being an interesting character in her own right – she does not really have her own plot as such, although she becomes friends with May this is never really explored in any detail and May very quickly commits suicide.  SMK does manage to explore the issue of Lily’s unconscious racism, her belief that no black woman could ever be as intelligent as she is, her embarrassment at what she perceives to be Rosaleen’s bad manners and her shame at laughing at jokes about black people.  Black people are ‘the other’, something she has obviously been encouraged to believe and she is surprised when June doesn’t immediately want to admit her into the Daughters of Mary.

Another criticism of the book is that SMK has chosen to give the women ‘white voices’ rather than using dialect. I think that this would be the hardest part of writing authentic black characters, the ability to make them sound authentic rather than as stereotypical southern black characters. Arguably, this could be down to using Lily as a narrator or portraying the women (aside from May and Rosaleen, who speaks in more of a vernacular) as college educated. As pointed out in A Critical Study of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees (Joy A. Herbert, 14^th July 2007, Georgia State University Digital Archive), this does not explain the Standard American English dialect spoken by the Daughters.  

Is the cover art true to the story?

Whereas the film poster is covered in pictures of the sisters and Rosaleen (as well as Lily), the covers of pretty much ALL the editions of this book (aside from the film tie in) have pictures of bees on there, pictures of Lily or pictures of a pot of honey with the black Mary on it. No illustrations of the sisters.

Who are the change agents?

Lily tries to change her own life by leaving home. Rosaleen gets attacked and arrested on the way to register to vote, leading Lily to leave home, the implication being that Lily has to ‘rescue’ Rosaleen from jail, incurring the housekeeper’s wrath. Zach is determined to become a lawyer by going to ‘white school’ but he is mainly helped and encouraged in this endeavour by Clayton, the ‘good’ male character. The sisters are the agents for change in Lily’s life, but it is more the circumstances of Zach’s arrest that cause June to get married and the death of May.  The worrying thing is the implication that because the sisters have chosen to stay single and not to have children, that somehow Lily has become the child that they were unable to have, something that has disturbing implications for both a post-colonial perspective (the use of the ‘mammy’ stereotype of the motherly black woman existing to bring up other people’s children) and from a feminist perspective (that a single, childless woman is somehow suffering from a kind of void that needs to be filled). As the book is narrated by Lily, SMK can show that from Lily’s perspective, the women are acting as her mother, there is no way of properly exploring if this is reciprocated or how the women feel about adopting her.  

How is beauty defined?

Rosaleen fits the ‘mammy’ stereotype very well in her physical appearance; the three sisters have a brief description of their physical traits but nothing about whether Lily thinks they are beautiful. Lauren Grobman in her article Teaching Cross-Racial Texts: Cultural Theft in The Secret Life of Bees (College English 2008), has remarked on the sexlessness of the woman, how August is ‘completely uninterested in sex and sexuality’ but her ‘feminist awareness [of marriage denying women freedom] is tainted by her complete devotion to caring for others and by the erasure of her own emotional and physical needs’.  I would be inclined to agree, even June’s relationship with Neil is bypassed, all the characters seem to do with one another is argue.  

Zach is attractive to her because he doesn’t look like what she considers a typical African-American. The only things that we know about the way that he looks, however, is that he is handsome, has a one-sided dimple, a good body and short hair, there is no proper description of his features.  

   

Conclusion

She tried and it’s good that she did, particularly with showing Lily trying to change her misconceptions and prejudices; however, there are elements that could be considered problematic within the novel. Interestingly, Grobman points out that quotes on the cover and inside the book are firstly by white women authors and secondly focus on her powers as a storyteller or narrative voice rather than using terms like ‘black’ or ‘African American’.  In her article, she argues that we should ‘give Kidd the benefit of the doubt’. Final conclusion – I read it, I enjoyed it, but it’s not a book to borrow racial attitudes from.