The Invention of Wings: A Novel

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Backlash of anti-abolition sentiment has been growing, but Nina and Sarah inspire each other to keep resisting these mobs.

They go on and on, but the final piece of her liberation doesn’t come, perhaps, until the end, when she’s able to speak her mind in the house where she was born. 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.I watched her fold her few belongings on top of the quilt and thought, This ain't the same Sarah who left here. Plus, I was constantly stopping to look up something in a book—what sort of mourning dress did women wear in 1819? Charlotte is accosted by a white guard because he saw her refusing to step into the mud so that a white woman could pass by. As I read through this long and detailed list, I was shocked to come upon the names of seventeen slaves. I would definitely be happy if it helped readers discover or rediscover Sarah and Angelina Grimké and the roles they played.

As for how I developed Handful and Sarah’s individual quests for freedom, I’m reminded of a certain looming moment in the story when Handful says to Sarah, “My body might be a slave, but not my mind. It’s also confusing that the target audience is YA, and I have difficulty envisioning this for them. Sarah’s mother, angry at the motherly bond between Sarah and Nina, sends Sarah north with John to try to improve John’s health. The daughter of a wealthy land-owning family in Charleston, Sarah stands out for both her ambition to be a female jurist and her fight against the slavery that gives her family such a privileged life.Sue 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.