The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
I wish I had known that this book was loosely based on a real person, Sarah Grimke, an abolitionist and women’s right activist in the early 1800s. That would have made me more invested in the book instead of only finding out in the afterword.
This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the book, because I certainly did. However, there were a few slower parts that I would have felt better about barreling through had I known Sarah and some of the situations described were real.
Sue Monk Kidd did a fantastic job of switching between the point of views of the two main characters who were very different. First, you had the educated, Southern Belle, Sarah Grimke. Then, you have her family’s slave, Hetty “Handful”. Although their grammar, voice and struggles are are opposite at times, it never felt like an abrupt change when you finished a chapter and switched to the other point of view.
Although Kidd described certain aspects of Sarah Grimke’s true life, she did take some liberties to make a more dynamic character and story. With Sarah’s story we see the struggles of a woman in the early 1800s wanting more from her life than what was deemed acceptable. Her story also seemed more real because there were many moments that her fears and insecurities held her back from fighting harder. To go against your disapproving family, society and the one you love with very little support is a terrifying circumstance.
Handful was a shining character as well. Handful is a strong-willed girl who fights more and more against her position as she grows older. We receive horrific accounts of the life of slaves from punishments to opinions and the struggle of a family staying in touch when sold. One of the most powerful quotes of this book came from Handful;
“My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round.”
Handful proves this with many small and large rebellious acts. She may have been the cleverest of everyone even without a full education. I book I’d recommend though not a particularly easy or happy one to read.
Synopsis: Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.