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.
Giving Voice, and Finding Her Own
Sue Monk Kidd Tackles Race in ‘The Invention of Wings’
[Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/books/sue-monk-kidd-tackles-race-in-the-invention-of-wings.html?ref=books&_r=0&pagewanted=print]
The writer Sue Monk Kidd found the voice that her new book needed when she became smitten with an enslaved girl who is only a footnote to history. “I could hear Hetty in my head quite clearly,” Ms. Kidd said. “She would talk and talk and talk and talk to me.”
In that novel, “The Invention of Wings” (Viking), Ms. Kidd gives Hetty what she never had in life: powerfully eloquent words that receive a weight equal to those of her owner, Sarah Grimké, who became a prominent abolitionist and advocate for women. The novel, out on Tuesday and the third pick of Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club 2.0, weaves fact and fiction as it considers 35 years of the women’s lives, beginning in Charleston, S.C., in 1803, with their alternating first-person accounts. Hetty goes first
About Sue Monk Kidd
[Source: http://suemonkkidd.com/author/]
Stephanie DotySue Monk Kidd was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia, a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel The Secret Life of Bees. She graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970 and later took creative writing courses at Emory University and Anderson College, as well as studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and other writers conferences.
Her book When the Heart Waits, published by Harper SanFrancisco in 1990 has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality. In 1996, Harper published The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, describing Kidd’s journey into feminist theology, a memoir that had a groundbreaking effect within religious circles.
In her forties, Kidd turned her attention to writing fiction, winning the South Carolina Fellowship in Literature and the 1996 Poets & Writers Exchange Program in Fiction. Her short stories appeared in TriQuarterly, Nimrod, and other literary journals and received a Katherine Anne Porter award and citations in Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories.
When her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, was published by Viking in 2002, it became a genuine literary phenomenon, spending more than 2½ years on the New York Times bestseller list. It has been translated into 36 languages and sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S. and 8 million copies worldwide. Bees was named the Book Sense Paperback Book of the Year in 2004, long-listed for the 2002 Orange Prize in England, and won numerous awards. For over a decade, the novel has been produced on stage by The American Place Theater, and in 2008 it was adapted into a movie by Fox Searchlight, which won the People’s Choice award for best movie and the NAACP Image award for best picture. It is taught widely in middle school, high school, and college classrooms.
Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, has sold well over a million copies since its publication by Viking in 2005, reaching #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remaining on the hardcover and paperback lists for nine months. Winner of the 2005 Quill Award for General Fiction, the novel was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, translated into 24 languages, and made into a television movie by Lifetime.The spiritual essays, meditations, and inspirational stories Kidd wrote in her thirties were collected into a single volume, Firstlight: The Early Inspiration Writings and published by Guideposts Books in 2006 and Penguin in 2007. After traveling with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, to sacred sites in Greece, Turkey, and France, Kidd and Taylor co-authored a memoir, Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story. Published by Viking in 2009, it appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including the New York Times list and has been published in several languages.
The Invention of Wings, Kidd’s third novel will be published January 7, 2014 by Viking.
Kidd serves on the board of advisors for Poets & Writers, Inc. She lives in Southwest Florida with her husband, Sandy, and their black lab Lily.
Women's Issues Matter
February 22, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
