This book!

There is so much good to be said here; let's start with the overall theme - slavery. Not a good subject, but in this novel by Sue Monk Kidd, it is brought to a level that all of us can understand. The story is broken into two distinct sections; (1) that of Sarah Grimke and her sister Angelina "Nina" is based on the author's research and retelling as well as fictionalizing these real sisters who, through a lifetime in a family of slave owners become advocates in real life for abolition as well as women's rights, and (2) Handful, the slave that Sarah was gifted on her eleventh birthday.

The readers switch by chapter, between Sarah's life as an unwilling participant in a family of slave owners to Handful, Sarah's slave. Sarah takes the time to secretly teach Handful the rudimentary skills to read (before the two are found out and the lessons come to a painful halt) and does her best to befriend the young girl who is her same age. Sarah spends the book searching for ways to make slave life better and to show her family, and later the nation, how wrong slavery is. Handful shows the reader the toil and trauma, the physical tragedies endured by slaves. She also shows us the love of family, the bond that ties those in tragedy, and the willingness of a spirit to live free.

The book is extremely well-crafted, unbelievably well-told, inexplicably touching, and equally heart-wrenching. During this past month of Black History (awareness), I have read several works by and about a piece of history that plagues me as a white American. If you are looking for an easy-to-read book about a difficult subject, The Invention of Wings is for you. If you are looking for a book about the human spirit, this book is for you. If you want to educate yourself without knowing you are doing so, The Invention of Wings is for you.

We must all read books such as The Invention of Wings. We must all do our part to learn and grow from history to be better in the future. ( )

Engaging. Two women of the Grimke household, one a slave, the other a daughter, each with their own chapters side by side from childhoold to adulthood and narrating the progression to abolitionist status for Sarah Grimke and her sister Angelina, among the earliest femaile abolitionists and first feminists. The fictional Handful/Hetty has her own narrative of life in the Grimke household, with lots of dangerous adventures culminating in a final escape.
I don't think the author's prose in this book was up to t other of her books, nonetheless it was absorbing and a page turner though quite distressing to read as the barbarism and cruelty of the treatment of slaves was laid out wihtout any sweetening -- at least I hope so. ( )

Excellent story of slavery.KIRKUS REVIEWKidd (The Mermaid Chair, 2005, etc.) hits her stride and avoids sentimental revisionism with this historical novel about the relationship between a slave and the daughter of slave owners in antebellum Charleston.Sarah Grimk? was an actual early abolitionist and feminist whose upbringing in a slaveholding Southern family made her voice particularly controversial. Kidd re-imagines Sarah?s life in tandem with that of a slave in the Grimk? household. In 1803, 11-year-old Sarah receives a slave as her birthday present from her wealthy Charleston parents. Called Hetty by the whites, Handful is just what her name implies¥sharp tongued and spirited. Precocious Sarah is horrified at the idea of owning a slave but is given no choice by her mother, a conventional Southern woman of her time who is not evil but accepts slavery (and the dehumanizing cruelties that go along with it) as a God-given right. Soon, Sarah and Handful have established a bond built on affection and guilt. Sarah breaks the law by secretly teaching Handful to read and write. When they are caught, Handful receives a lashing, while Sarah is banned from her father?s library and all the books therein, her dream of becoming a lawyer dashed. As Sarah and Handful mature, their lives take separate courses. While Handful is physically imprisoned, she maintains her independent spirit, while Sarah has difficulty living her abstract values in her actual life. Eventually, she escapes to Philadelphia and becomes a Quaker, until the Quakers prove too conservative. As Sarah?s activism gives her new freedom, Handful?s life only becomes harder in the Grimk? household. Through her mother, Handful gets to know Denmark Vesey, who dies as a martyr after attempting to organize a slave uprising. Sarah visits less and less often, but the bond between the two women continues until it is tested one last time.Kidd?s portrait of white slave-owning Southerners is all the more harrowing for showing them as morally complicated, while she gives Handful the dignity of being not simply a victim, but a strong, imperfect woman.

Historical novel; good story line ( )

Loved this. It will stay with me for a long time. Read 22.12.23 - 23.12.23 ( )