The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd

By Laia Esquerrà

The Secret Life of Bees (by Sue Monk Kidd) is a drama set in South Carolina in 1964.

This is a dramatic but beautiful and very realistic story about the difficulties of being a "nigger" or living in their vicinity in that period.

Lily, a 14-year-old white girl, escapes from her horrible father, along with their maid Rosaleen, whom she gets out of jail. The two of them escape to Tiburon, SC, where they move into a black women's house. The Boatwright sisters are very powerful black women who own a bee farm. Lily and Rose work with them and live in the honey house. The Boatwrights have a different religion and they encourage Lily to join them. Lily learns to have faith and finds out what being loved is. One day she tells August (the oldest sister) what a horrible person she is and that she killed her mother when she was four. August comforts her and gives her some of her mother's belongings and tells Lily about her. Her mother had lived there too; August was her nanny.

Lily is the main character of the story; she is a young girl who is very strong and mature. Over the course of the book she gets to know what it is to be loved and will find her love while dealing with a dark past, a horrible father and an unknown mother.

This should not be missed. The book is worth reading, and the movie is also well worth watching. I recommend it because it gives an accessible but very clear vision of the 60s in America and of how black people were treated.