The Invention of Wings

I loved the juxtaposition between the two characters–Sarah and Handful–who are both prisoners/slaves to the societal norms of the time: Handful being an actual slave in the American south and Sarah being held back with the expectations of being a women in the 1800's. While the narrative is slow for the most part, the events are most interesting. I have never heard of Sarah Grimke, the real-life abolitionist, so it was interesting to hear some of the events or the situations that Sarah experienced in order to change the world around her.

Easy read and enjoyable with insights of life during slavery.

Quotes:
“To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”

“Color prejudice is at the bottom of everything. If it's not fixed, the plight of the Negro will continue long after abolition.”

“Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: “History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.”

I expected a high level of cringe with this one, but I was surprised. Certainly, I anticipated some degree of melodrama framed in the racist trope of black people being given a voice by their white liberator. And I can't say this novel wasn't without problems, the biggest of which is probably that everything revolves around Sarah: Hetty seems to exist as means for Sarah's story to be told. Kidd provides a surprisingly convincing voice for Hetty, but doesn't grant her the same purpose or drive as she does her white counterpart. Still, for as bad as this could've gone, this was actually fairly devoid of cringe.

What bothered me most while reading was how much Charlotte and Hetty got away with. Were the Grimkés really this “forgiving”? If not, why portray them this way? Would more realistic punishments have alienated Kidd's reading audience?

The story has a nice pace and a great structure. The characters are fairly realized and provide various degrees of inspiration. Maybe I just read through this one too fast, because I had to, but this story didn't stick with me the way I expect a well-told story to. The Invention of Wings is an admirable effort that maybe missed the mark in a couple areas, but can be commended for the areas where it excelled.

The Invention of Wings is one of my PopSugar Reading Challenge books, for the prompt “A Book from a Celebrity Book Club.” It was Oprah's 3rd pick for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. Oprah interviewed Sue Monk Kidd in the January 2014 issue of O Magazine.

I can definitely see why Oprah was so affected by this book; the two main characters are Sarah Grimké, an early abolitionist and women's rights activist, and Hetty Handful, the slave gifted to her by her mother when she turned 11. In an afterword, Kidd explains that she did try to stay mostly historically accurate, and Handful was gifted to Sarah when she was 11, though she apparently died not long after. In Kidd's book, however, Handful survives. Sarah and her younger sister, Angelina, were real people, and really did most of what is ascribed to them in the book, though Kidd passes a couple of their deeds from one sister to the other. The Grimkés were from Charleston, South Carolina, and born into an aristocratic, slave-owning family headed by a prestigious judge. Their abolitionist actions get them exiled from Charleston and from their church. Meanwhile, Hetty, her ownership having returned to Sarah's mother, dreams of freedom and plots rebellions of her own.

I was a little wary going into this book; I've read a couple of Oprah's picks before, and generally found them dry and uninteresting. This one, though, was very well written. The voices of both women came through clearly, as did some of the brutality of slavery. Kidd also wrote The Secret Life of Bees, which got a lot of attention. If it's anything like this, I might have to finally read that as well.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Both audiobook narrators did a great job portraying their characters. I was interested by the notes at the end to learn the Grimke sisters were real, and felt rather let down by my own historical knowledge. I'd never read a SMK before, but I see the appeal.

Amazing. Wish I had written this myself.

I can't believe the characters of Sarah and Angelina Grimke were based on real sisters who were female pioneers in the abolitionist and feminist movements. I was thrilled to learn this and only wish I had learned about them sooner back in high school and/or college history classes!

Readable, predictable. Didn't leave the impact it seemed it might.

My Mom raved about this book after listening to an audiobook version, so, of course, I had to see what all the hubbub was about. Okay, and the book showed up on a number of best-of-2014 book lists.

I often don't enjoy fictional stories based on historical characters (“Loving Frank,” for example, was a real drag), so I approached the book with some trepidation. Perhaps, Sue Monk Kidd's extensive research (don't miss the author's note at the end) helped to bring out the character's voices more than in other historical fiction I've read. To be honest, I did not know much about the Grimke sisters and would like to learn more given their ground-breaking abolition and women's rights activities.

In this novel, unlike another book I just read, switching narrators was an effective tool for seeing the story from a house slave in a well-to-do antebellum Charleston and a young woman who owns this same slave. I found the characters of Charlotte and Handful to be particularly well-drawn; these sections were in technicolor without being overdone. Also, Sarah Grimke's struggles between social propriety, expectations and hope for a loving husband and children, and social justice were also well-done.

While “The Invention of Wings” wasn't one of my favorite books of the year, it was enjoyable and I'm glad I listened to Mom.

I absolutely loved this book. It wasn't until I finished that is realized that the Grimke sisters were real inspirational women in our history. I like to think that I'd have their bravery during that time.