The Invention of Wings
Published by: Penguin Publishing GroupPages: 384
ISBN13: 978-0143121701
Buy the Book: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Bookshop.org, Google Play
Overview
• Published by Viking, January 7, 2014
• Selected for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0
• A New York Times #1 Bestseller
From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees: a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.
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 Grimkes’ 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.
Sue Monk Kidd’s sweeping new novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday in 1803, when she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful, who is to be her waiting maid. 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.
As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.
Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in search for something better, and Charlotte’s lover, Denmark Vesey, a charismatic free black man who is planning insurrection.
This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at one of the most devastating wounds in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.
Reading Groups
Introduction to The Invention of Wings
About Sue Monk Kidd
A Conversation with Sue Monk Kidd
Discussion Questions
Praise
"Here’s what makes The Invention of Wings extraordinary: Sue Monk Kidd has written a conversation changer. It is impossible to read this book and not come away thinking differently about our status as women and about all the unsung heroines who played a role in getting us to where we are... A tour de force.”
—Oprah Winfrey, O The Oprah Magazine
"The novel is a textured masterpiece, quietly yet powerfully poking our consciences and our consciousness. What does it mean to be a sister, a friend, a woman, an outcast, a slave? How do we use our talents to better ourselves and our world? How do we give voice to our power, or learn to empower our voice?... Kidd, an exquisite and masterful writer, explores these difficult topics and complex ideas and does so unflinchingly — yet somehow leaves us feeling uplifted and hopeful."
—NPR Books
“Masterly... The Invention of Wings is a story about empowering women to change the world... With historical bedrock as her foundation for a compelling narrative, Kidd serves up a remarkable novel about finding your voice.”
—Chicago Tribune
Excerpt
Hetty Handful Grimké
There was a time in Africa the people could fly. Mauma told me this one night when I was ten years old. She said, “Handful, your granny- mauma saw it for herself. She say they flew over trees and clouds. She say they flew like blackbirds. When we came here, we left that magic behind.”
My mauma was shrewd. She didn’t get any reading and writing like me. Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy. She looked at my face, how it flowed with sorrow and doubt, and she said, “You don’t believe me? Where you think these shoulder blades of yours come from, girl?”
Those skinny bones stuck out from my back like nubs. She patted them and said, “This all what left of your wings. They nothing but these flat bones now, but one day you gon get ’em back.”
I was shrewd like mauma. Even at ten I knew this story about people flying was pure malarkey. We weren’t some special people who lost our magic. We were slave people, and we weren’t going anywhere. It was later I saw what she meant. We could fly all right, but it wasn’t any magic to it.
The Secret Life of Bees
Published by: PenguinPages: 336
ISBN13: 978-0142001745
Buy the Book: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Bookshop.org, Google Play
Overview
• Published by Viking, 2002
• New York Times Bestseller for 2 ½ Years
• 8 Million Copies Sold Worldwide
• Book Sense Book of the Year, 2004
• Good Morning America “Read This” Book Club Pick
Set in South Carolina during 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a fourteen year old white girl, Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three racists in town, they escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily finds refuge in their mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna.
Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. The Secret Life of Bees is a major literary triumph about the search for love and belonging, a novel that possesses a rare wisdom about life and the power and divinity of the female spirit.
Reading Groups
Introduction
A Conversation with Sue Monk Kidd
Discussion Questions for the Reader
The 10th Anniversary Edition of The Secret Life of Bees
Teacher's Guide
For use in classrooms
The Movie
Meet the Cast
Watch the Trailer
Sue's Visit to the Set
Praise
“A dazzling fictional debut….The Secret Life of Bees is storytelling at its finest and the end result is something quite extraordinary.”
—Bookpage Magazine
“Inspiring. Sue Monk Kidd is a direct literary descendent of Carson McCullers.”
—The Baltimore Sun
“The stunning metaphors and realistic characters... (of) this sweeping debut novel are so poignant that they will bring tears to your eyes.”
—Library Journal
Excerpt
The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness
—Man and Insects
Chapter One
At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.
During the day I heard them tunneling through the walls of my bedroom, sounding like a radio tuned to static in the next room, and I imagined them in there turning the walls into honeycombs, with honey seeping out for me to taste.
The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angle Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed. I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe she wouldn't mind; I will get to that. Right now it's enough to say that despite everything that happened that summer, I remain tender toward the bees.
The Mermaid Chair
Published by: PenguinPages: 368
ISBN13: 978-0143036692
Buy the Book: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Bookshop.org, Google Play
Overview
• Published by Viking, 2005
• # 1 New York Times Bestseller
• Winner of the Quill Award for General Fiction
Inside the church of a Benedictine monastery on Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.
When Jessie Sullivan is summoned home to the island to cope with her eccentric mother’s seemingly inexplicable behavior, she is living a conventional life with her husband, Hugh, a life “molded to the smallest space possible.” Jessie loves Hugh, but once on the island, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk about to take his final vows. Amid a rich community of unforgettable island women and the exotic beauty of marshlands, tidal creeks, and majestic egrets, Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, with a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right and the immutable force of home and marriage.
What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, it will allow Jessie to awaken to herself, as she explores the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic. A vividly imagined love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul, The Mermaid Chair is a transcendent tale of self-discovery.
Reading Groups
Introduction
Discussion Guide
The Movie
Watch the Trailer
Sue's Visit to the Set
Praise
"Kidd has a flair for making us see her characters with great vividness and immediacy."
—New York Times Book Review
"Kidd's imagination, originality and command of language never cease. She is simply a profound storyteller.”
—The Denver Post
"Rewarding… Kidd achieves a bold intensity and complexity that wasn't possible in The Secret Life of Bees, narrated by teenage Lily. Emotionally rich… full of sultry, magical descriptions.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Excerpt
Chapter One
February 17, 1988, I opened my eyes and heard a procession of sounds: first the phone going off on the opposite side of the bed, rousing us at 5:04 a.m. to what could only be a calamity, then rain pummeling the roof of our old Victorian house, sluicing its sneaky way to the basement, and finally small puffs of air coming from Hugh’s lower lip, each one perfectly timed, like a metronome.
Twenty years of this puffing. I’d heard it when he wasn’t even asleep, when he sat in his leather wing chair after dinner, reading through the column of psychiatric journals rising from the floor, and it would seem like the cadence against which my entire life was set.
The phone rang again, and I lay there, waiting for Hugh to pick up, certain it was one of his patients, probably the paranoid schizophrenic who’d phoned last night convinced the CIA had him cornered in a federal building in downtown Atlanta.
A third ring, and Hugh fumbled for the receiver. “Yes, hello,” he said, and his voice came out coarse, a hangover from sleep.
I rolled away from him then and stared across the room at the faint, watery light on the window, remembering that today was Ash Wednesday, feeling the inevitable rush of guilt.
My father had died on Ash Wednesday when I was nine years old, and in a convoluted way, a way that made no sense to anyone but me, it had been at least partially my fault.
The Book of Longings
Published by: Penguin Publishing GroupPages: 433
ISBN13: 978-0143111399
Buy the Book: Penguin Random House, Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Bookshop.org, Google Play, Audible
Listen to a Sample
Overview
• Published by Viking, April 21, 2020
• Instant New York Times Bestseller
• #1 IndieBound Bestseller
An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings
In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything.
Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana’s pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome’s occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history.
Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus’s life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman’s bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.
Behind the Scenes
Q&A with historical photos from Sue's collection
Readers' Guide/Book Club Kit
Dear Reader
Discussion Questions
A Conversation with Sue Monk Kidd
View the Readers' Guide/Book Club Kit
Praise
"Kidd is courageous in imagining the life of Jesus as a married man. How many authors would take this on?...The Book of Longings is not just an extraordinary novel, but one with lasting power...Kidd's brilliance shines through on so many levels, but not the least in her masterful, reverential approach to capturing Jesus of Nazareth as a fully human young man in his 20's. ...an epic masterpiece that is a triumph of insight and storytelling."
Associated Press
“A richly imagined first-person narrative...In addition to providing a woman-centered version of New Testament events, Kidd’s novel is also a vibrant portrait of a woman striving to preserve and celebrate women’s stories—her own and countless others.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Historical fiction page-turner... An excellent book club choice...The intensity, bravery, and strength of character of Ana, as imagined by Kidd will inspire readers but in a different way: to live authentically and remain true to oneself."
Library Journal, Starred Review
"Kidd's bold narrative revisionism allows for her protagonist to be in every respect the equal of her husband while posing this question: How would Western culture be different if men and women had grown in appreciation of each other's spirit?"
O Magazine
"Sue Monk Kidd believes writing is an act of courage. In "The Book of Longings," she rises to the occasion."
The New York Times: Inside the List
“Kidd’s narrative, etched into the emotionally precise and tactile prose of Ana’s first-person voice . . . is not an attempt to rewrite history. Instead it’s an exploration of a triumphant, fierce spirit and the stories she aches to tell. There’s an exuberance to Ana that vibrates off every page, and that is a testament to Kidd’s gifts.”
BookPage
"I kept having to close this novel and breathe deeply, again and again. A radical reimagining of the New Testament that reflects on women's longing and silencing and silencing and awakening, it is a true masterpiece."
Glennon Doyle, Untamed
Excerpt
i.
I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth. I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder. He said he heard rumblings inside me while I slept, a sound like thunder from far over the Nahal Zippori valley or even farther beyond the Jordan. I don’t doubt he heard something. All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night. That my husband bent his heart to mine on our thin straw mat and listened was the kindness I most loved in him. What he heard was my life begging to be born.