What traumatic events have you experienced that have shaped your identity? These tragic times in our lives become the neural images in our mind that we keep hidden from others and even ourselves. We tell ourselves there is no need to open the museum of the mind. Everything is safe. Yet, Poe's heart keeps beating. Louder and louder until we have no choice but to open the gate. Memories flowing into the tributary of our life sometimes overflow our banks, and automatically we create a dam to control our raging thoughts. Instead of a dam, we need a gate.
One of the threads that weaves it way through the lives of the characters of The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Kidd Monk, is the trauma of abuse. Lily, the 14 year old narrator, knows what it is like to feel the pain of abandonment, physical and emotional abuse, shame and guilt. Her father, T Ray, has also the loss of his wife, yet there is a lingering suspicion that this wound may be self inflicted. Rosaleen, Lily's caretaker, suffers the trauma of a racist society, that does not judge individuals by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin.
Lily is emerging to open the doors of her past and find the truth. T Ray wants to lock the doors, build a brick fence around them, and act as if tragedies never struck. Rosaleen, refuses to allow the trauma of the past to determine her future, and marches on and through the enemies of societal change, defiantly by her actions communicating that she is not going to take it any more.
The first chapter of the book, like the first chapter of our lives, brings up many questions. The question is who will get out of prison? Yes, a physical cell. But also the prison of the mind.
Next Wednesday I will comment on the entire book. Please join me and add to the discussion!
1 comment:
I will not get my book until August 29.....if you could STRETCH it out.....
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