The Invention of Wings: A Novel

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The way into the early nineteenth century, of course, is through an awful lot of research. My husband joked I spent more time in the nineteenth century than I did in the twenty-first. My aim was to create a “world” for the reader to enter, one as richly textured, tangible, and authentic as I could make it. I read and read, filling up five big notebooks with details and ideas. I drew maps of the interior of the Grimké house and the work yard, and etched a loose outline of the thirty-five year span of the story on large sheets of paper, one for each of the book’s six parts. I hung them in my study, using them to map the flow of events. I also made lots of field trips, visiting libraries, museums, historical societies, and historic houses, all of which I may have enjoyed a little too much because I finally had to make myself stop reading, mapping and traipsing about and start writing.

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. For you, it’s the other way round.” Handful is conveying a truth she knows only too well herself, that one’s mind can become a cage, too. Finding their freedom had to do with liberating themselves internally, discovering a sense of self, and the boldness to express that self. There’s a scene in which Handful willfully takes a bath in the Grimké’s majestic copper bathtub. I can’t tell you how much pleasure I derived from writing this scene. Handful’s bath is tinged with defiance, but it becomes a baptism into her own worth. Observing her in the aftermath of it, Sarah says, “She had the look of someone who’d declared herself.” Handful has begun to understand that even though her body is trapped in slavery, her mind is her own. The question then became how to emancipate herself physically. What needed to transpire inside of her to bring her to the crucial moment of risking everything? I felt that the moment occurs near the end of the story, when little missus disparages the story portrayed in her Charlotte’s quilt and Handful fears she may burn it. I saw this moment as a kind of watershed in which all the accumulated sorrows and deprivations of Handful’s life, and even of her mother’s life, come together, causing her to want freedom more than the next breath. “To leave or die trying.” Sue Monk Kidd: I'm always captivated by stories of women who find a way to be daring—misbehaving women. The Grimkés slammed me in the heart. I felt like their story was mine to tell. A textured masterpiece, quietly yet powerfully poking our consciences and our consciousness . . . leaves us feeling uplifted and hopeful.”– NPR The Invention of Wings Information Here (I suggest looking for the original non annotated version, not the Oprah annotated version) Meet the Author, Sue Monk KiddSMK: I had to do an enormous amount of research, because I wanted to get it right. I spent a year reading—slave narratives; people writing about slavery, about abolition; 19th-century history. I had quotes on the walls of my stairway leading up to my study, and every day I would read the quotes before I started writing. The Invention of Wings was a powerful story of a turbulent time in history and that was conveyed in the brilliant narration by Jenna Lamia and Adepero Oduye. The story alternates points of view from Sarah Grimke and a slave on her parents' plantation named Handful. Lamia and Oduye brought the story, the people, and the places to vivid life. I was so immersed in their narration that I felt like I was sitting on the porch of the South Carolina plantation house sipping sweet tea and hoping for a breeze while watching all of this play out. The Invention of Wings, The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story We think that we know something about the atrocities of slavery because we learned about it in American history class, or we saw glimpses of it in a movie or a book. But it isn't until we confront a depiction of it that seems so real and horrible, that we realize how very little we really know of the injustice of slavery. Sue Monk Kidd has provided that depiction in this amazing novel.

SMK: I was interested in how my characters could invent their own freedom, their own voices in the world—their wings. How has your understanding of slavery been changed by reading The Invention of Wings? What did you learn about it that you didn’t know before? Loved that the author took time to explain her research and her fascination with this subject. She also explains who and what were real and what was not. Always appreciated in a historical novel. If this isn’t an American classic-to-be, I don’t know what is. . .this book is as close to perfect as any I’ve ever read.”– The Dallas Morning News D. G. Martin (May 27, 2020). "The wife of Jesus: the North Carolina connection". Independent Tribune.From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and the forthcoming novel The Book of Longings,a novel about two unforgettable American women.