I’ve just finished reading The Secret Life of Bees. I know I’m late on it, but at least I’m reading! I’m getting it done. After this little write-up is done I’ve included my favorite quotes. Just little bits that jumped out at me when I read them. I’m not going to do a book review. One, because that seems like an intense process and I don’t want to have to go through all that drama to say that I like (or don’t like something). Two, I am no literary authority and I wasn’t examining it as such. I was just looking for a good read. It was a good read, too. I enjoyed Lily’s journey, painful as it was. Her quest to find a place where she belonged and could be loved was extremely moving. Honestly, though, I read the book so that I could watch the movie and judge it. So I did. I watched it, and here I am making my judgment. The movie was true to the idea of Lily’s journey, but I feel like the deviations it took from the portrayal of race relations of its time were definitely lacking. The movie deliberately went out of its way to avoid the idea of institutionalized racism (specifically when it comes to police, jails and the lack of fairness and protection that the black community received) and that upset me. To completely wipe out these scenes minimizes the deep seated racism that existed. The movies glossing over of the cop allowing Rosaleen to be beat in a prison cell and the cops holding young, innocent, black boys in jail without proper charges does a disservice to our perception of racism as it occurred historically.
Rosaleen’s initial beating happens in plain view in the movie version (hereto referred to as Bees) but the following chase by the men who assault her, their intimidation and the officer’s role in this is completely removed in the film. In the book the police officer offers her no protection as she’s placed in his care. He is complicit in the assault against her and show very little remorse or empathy. As the book is set in 1964 after the signing of the Civil Rights Act it is appropriate to explore the gritty reality of racism. The fact that it is not just perpetrated by individuals, but by individuals in power, people with the responsibility to protect. When those with authority fail to act it reinforces the idea that racism and torture are permissible and acceptable. Bees blatantly disregards this scene and by doing so does a disservice to the depth of historical and institutionalized racism. Since we have yet to solve the problem of racism the active removal of a thought provoking scene in a major motion picture seems irresponsible. It could have provided a venue for people to discuss racism as it was then and as it stands now. Racism is not something that has stayed in the past, it moves with us until we are willing to face the reality of our history as a nation. I’m sure there are people who feel that we should get over it and let it go because it happened a long time ago. However the effects of it are still felt and equality has yet to be attained. We are still separate and not equal and ignoring it is not going to fix the problem.
Only discussion and respect can bring true understanding. If an honest conversation cannot be had we cannot move forward. If we cannot handle the violence of racism in film how will we handle it in reality?
Now, here are the quotes I liked:
I was always having to choose between decent hair and a good night’s sleep
I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.
…but people aren’t meant to be overlybright in everything.
I was thinking how much older fourteen had made me. In the space of a few hours I’d become forty years old.
Pious people have always gotten on my nerves.
He hit me till the policeman said that was enough. They didn’t get no apology, though.
…my skin had never felt so white to me.
…all I could think was August is so intelligent, so cultured, and I was surprised by this. That’s what let me know I had some prejudice buried inside me.
“its your secret,” she said. “you do what you want with it.”
Let all that misery slide right off you. Just let it go.
Every little thing wants to be loved.
I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone’s joy seemed to double it?
I wanted to let go of my feelings for a little while…
I have noticed that if you look carefully at people’s eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.
Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.
He smiled then, and I saw he had a one-side dimple. It’s a feature that has always gotten to me.
Because you look like the kind of girl who’ll wreck something for sure.
Bullshit. You got to imagine what’s never been.
I envied turtles their shells, how they could disappear at will.
Being in love and getting married, now, that’s two different things. I was in love once, of course I was. Nobody should go through life without falling in love.
The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.
…and it washed over me for the first time in my life just how much importance the world had ascribed to skin pigment, how lately it seemed that skin pigment was the sun and everything else in the universe was the orbiting planets.
It had been my experience for nearly a year that uttering the words ‘female trouble’ could get me into places I wanted to go and out of places I didn’t.
Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?
Stepping inside, I heard a sigh so deep and satisfying that for a moment I didn’t realize it had come from my own lungs.
After you get stung, you cant unstung no matter how much you whine about it.
I wasn’t sure of everything we were laughing about — I was just glad we were doing it together.
Sometimes things of magnitude settle over you with excruciating slowness.
The last thing I expected was to fall asleep, but when there’s a blow to the system, all the body wants to do is go to sleep and dream on it.
… Fear stopped me. I wanted to know and I didn’t want to know. I was all hung up in limbo.
…I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.
… It’s something everybody wants — for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.
…I saw the blaze of love and anguish that had come so often into her face. In the end it had burned her up.
‘We can’t think of changing our skin,’ he said. ‘change the world — that’s how we gotta think.’
I just wish I knew where I was meant to end up.
…people can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.
My mother’s life was too heavy for me.
You think you want to know something and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind. From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, Amnesiac.
…close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.
The four of them lined up beside us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies like they might have to use them to beat the living hell out of somebody.
A person shouldn’t look too far down her nose at absurdities.
cdlbb 