How To Grow Your Geek: Parenting and More!

Secret life of bees– by Sue Monk Kidd

from the back of the book: set in south Carolina in 1964, the secret life of bees tells the story of lilly owens; whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. when lilly’s fierce hearted black “stand in” mother, Roseleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, lilly decides to spring them both free. 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, lilly is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. this is a remarkable tale about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

I am a speed reader. i can start a book, say a hard cover; and have it read in two weeks easy. I can even read two or three books at the same time and tell you anything about them. when i first started this book, all that changed. want to know how long it took me to read this? ONE MONTH. yeps, you read right, one whole month. because this book, even though i wanted to get to the end, i wanted so much to soak up every last detail of the story. i didn’t want to rush, and move on to something else. i wanted to live in the story, help lilly though her struggles, gather honey with the sisters, and i wanted to help make a happy ending. this book got to me as no other book has ever before it. it is that good.

lilly is a young girl growing up in the deep south in the time of the civil rights movement, in fact the first chapter; black people are just getting the right to vote. she lives on a peach farm with her mother and father. as the book opens, her parents are in the middle of a big fight, and her mother who has been gone, has come back and is packing a suitcase to leave a unloving husband. he comes home and finds her packing, while lilly is in the closet. they have a big fight and her mother is killed by accident.
years later, lilly is being raised by a cruel and strict father, and the black house keeper roselin. her father is the meanest, cruelest person ever! and at first i was like no one can be this cruel to their own child. but i guess there are people like this, you see it all the time on the news. and i guess he was taking out his wife’s death on lilly, or perhaps he just knew he wasn’t man enough to be a good person and raise her. maybe when he looked at her, he saw his wife. or i think, he saw what a failure he was and it drove him nuts. either way, he was not a person you could ever like.

when roselin went into town with lilly to register to vote, a group of men tryed to stop them. and roselin, being the type of person she is, dumped her spit juice on them; landing herself in jail first and a hospital next. lilly broke her out of jail and since they could not go home, decides to find out more about her mother by going to a place on the back of a honey jar label. there they meet up with three sister who keep bees and worship the black madonna. lilly tells a few lies and they wind up living there for a few weeks. not finding out later that these three sisters hold the missing pieces to lilly’s mother’s past. and to her own future.

guys, i LOVED this book. it was full of strong characters, the heart aches of lilly you yourself felt, and the love of the sisters and their own stories you really got into. i never read anything like this. i learned a lot about the civil right movement, but seeing it though a black person’s eyes, like in this book; showed me how unfair things were and how cruel people could be to one another. the black madonna at first i did not understand, but the more i read, the more i came to realize something important. all though their lives back then, black people were denied everything, they even had to drink from separate water fountains. so i feel like mary, the catholic white mary was someone they could not relate too. so they made the black mary someone to take her place, it was their own mary. and the mary in the book was a mast head from a ship, with chains around her, but she had a strong face with her one hand raised in the air as if in defiance to all around her. it was like she was saying, these chains are not going to hold me or my people down.
the sisters are all named after months of the year, there is may who is a little crazy, and any little bit of sadness she takes into herself and breaks down over. there is june, who plays a cello at funerals for black people when they die, she also doesn’t care for lilly at all at first. and then there is august. she is the oldest and the head of the house hold, she is wise and kind and reminds me a lot of my grandmother mary.

the entire book, lilly is growing. not on the outside so much, but inside. she is still hurting a great deal, but she is starting to find love for the first time in her life. yet she and roseline are wanted by the police and her cruel father. she is trying hard to get up the nerve to ask august if she knows her mother, but she is running out of time and losing hope. well she find the answers to her her questions. and will they be the answers she really wants to hear? wow i wish i could tell you what happens but i can’t.

this book will make you cry a lot, and mad a lot. but here is what i will alway remember about the book. we all make mistakes in life, everyone; it’s what we do with those mistakes; what we take away from them that makes us stronger. also, what i took away from this, is how strong a person or group of people can be. all of these women had such pride and dignity about them, it made you want to add that to your own life.

the movie was just like the book, very little was changed, all of the actress were great in it. and i am a huge fan of both dakota fanning and queen latifah. (queen latifah is one of my all time heroes. she can do anything, and she is so down to earth and real.)

guys please. go see this film and read this book. if you have daughters, take them. its that good, i just can’t say enough about it. its such a important thing on so many levels. and will teach you a lot. about yourself, and others.

there is a place in the books where lilly is first dealing with bees and getting honey i’ll leave you guys with. when lilly asks, how to i keep from getting stung? august says, send the bees love lilly, send them love. ok send your kids love, share this with them.

darcy