Reflections: The Secret Life of Bees

I’m bereft of words to describe or share all the beauty of this book. Being so popular, this book needs little introduction. It’s the story of Lily Owens - a teenager yearning for forgiveness, closure, and motherly love. Lily’s earliest memories as a child is the tragic accident of her mom’s death. Her mother’s death leaves her shattered in more than one way. Living with her unkind, embittered dad and being “raised” by an African-American woman, Rosaleen, Lily is a complete misfit at school and in her neighborhood. She embalms her hurt and yearning by slipping into a carefully constructed fantasy in which she is forgiven, and loved, and loved, and loved till the end of eternity. When Rosaleen gets into trouble and is threatened to be killed, Lily finally snaps her thread of connection with her father and runs away from home along with Rosaline. One of the very few precious memorabilia she has of her mom is a statue of a Black Mary with her mom’s inscription -- “Tiburon, South Carolina”. So, that’s where she goes; in a blind, crazed, desperate need to find any bits of her mother’s past. As if she was meant to be on this journey, she finds August Boatwright - the warm, wise, beekeeper and entrepreneur of Black Madonna Honey. Lily convinces August to take her and Rosaline into her home for a while. Along with August and her two sisters, Lily begins a renewed life - a life where her fears are slowly put to rest, she learns to exorcise the ghosts of her past and reach a state of forgiveness, acceptance, and love.

From start to finish, this is a thoroughly poignant and beautiful story. The tale is set during the time of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Despite the newly passed law that racial discrimination is illegal, there is still tension, violence, and nonacceptance by rigid members of the society. Being white, Lily Owens lives within a safe brood of kind African-American women and wonders why there is so much fuss surrounding skin color. With this societal tension in the background and Lily’s personal turmoil at the forefront, the story weaves in and out of these two parallel threads to knit a beautiful and memorable set of characters. I can’t find a better adjective other than “beautiful”.

The characters are so effortlessly developed with so much nuance that I wanted to pack my toothbrush and go in search of a pink house in Tiburon, South Carolina, and live with all of them. August Boatwright infuses so much calmness, strength, wisdom and faith, I didn’t want to be reminded that she was fictional. It’s been a long time since I came across fictional characters with so much realism and appeal that I was sad to finish the book. It was also refreshing that Lily’s growth wasn’t shown in the regular “coming-of-age” light; her growth was more spiritual and all-rounded. Lily evoked a strong gush of emotions in me through her simple, deep, and touching narration. The author, Sue Monk Kidd needs to be credited for all of this, of course. I loved her writing. It’s very easy to go overboard with the multitude of emotions throbbing in this story, but her writing (in Lily’s voice) is neither overdone with superfluous emotions and insights, nor is it understated through a crude, matter-of-fact approach. She treads a beautiful balance here, bringing about just the right amounts of emotion, insight, and even casual humor!

I savored reading every line of this memorable story. The bond between a mother and child is one of the most unique, joyous, loving yet painful, and complicated relationships that Nature has devised. It’s ironic that there’s always as much joy as pain in this relationship. Lily’s story deals with all the complexities that make people stray from their ideal selves. But despite the world abounding with so many less-than-ideal people and relationships, all one can count on is one’s own inner-strength and faith to forgive, forget, and accept.

Reflections: How I Became a Human Being

Mark O’Brien fell victim to Polio at a very young age. Since then, his condition only kept worsening, despite his lingering childlike hopes. His spine curved, the muscles in his limbs atrophied, and his lungs deteriorated, making him dependent on an unwieldy iron lung (a respirator of sorts) to breathe. Mark was shuttled between hospitals and his home for the predominant part of his childhood and teenage years. But his burning ambition to be independent and to make a living on his own, drove him to pursue admission into University of California, Berkeley’s Undergraduate Disabled Students’ Program. After much struggle, he got in and successfully graduated as an English Major. Having a penchant for literature and writing since his early years, he converted his interest into his livelihood. He worked hard to establish himself as a freelance writer and journalist. More importantly, he toiled all his life to establish himself as a human-being - a person worthy of love, respect and regard. Mark’s memoir is much more than inspirational to me - it is a touching account of what Independence, acceptance, and respect in society means.

I am always interested in issues surrounding one’s identity - how identity is felt and worn by an individual, how this gets perceived by society, how society’s perception feeds back and tinges one’s awareness of their identity, and then the ways in which one chooses to project it. Mark’s words are full of these identity feedback loops, and the title of the memoir fittingly describes his angst. In an Utilitarian sense, a disabled body screams of “low-utility” in every segment of society - professional and personal. Mark’s battle, and that of several others, is to go against this stream of thought in a society that is Utilitarian at its core. It is shameful that people who can’t contribute to society in the same ways as able-bodied people, are indeed regarded a little less human, and are afforded less humane treatment. Starting from the ways in which one looks at such a person, to the conversations (if at all) they have with the person, they are made to feel so different as to not even think of belonging to the same class of species. Mark’s memoir is a plea to correct political policies that doom the lives of disabled people suffering such indignities to their identity, wasting away their lives and minds in institutions and hospitals. The US has come a long way with its Disability Act, but many other societies still live in the dark.

There are three other aspects of this memoir that really touched me (some of which I have already stressed before)

1. The misconception surrounding independence and incompetence
When physically challenged people talk of their desire to be independent, they are often misconstrued as being in denial, and not facing reality. True, the extent of independence and privacy that they can hope for is different from what an able-bodied person can experience. But by independence, they mean the right and freedom to express themselves, choose between options, decide for themselves, and control the directions of their life as much as they can. The unfortunate misconception that a crippled person faces is that of mental incompetence. People hardly want to ask permission, or provide choices to a person in a wheelchair, who projects the image of helplessness and physical incompetence. Our animalistic brain assumes that a physical challenge equals low brain power. To break such stereotypical molds, we have several highly accomplished scientists and artists who repeatedly assert that the physical state is no reflection of the agility of the mental state. It is a fatalistic approach to keep dictating the lives of those with a severe physical disability, using the insensitive argument that they anyway have far too few choices in life to contend with, and heaven forbid, they shouldn’t be hoping for more.

2. Bravery versus fearlessness
Mark’s memoir is extremely honest. He cringes when people call him brave, probably because the word discounts his struggles, fears, and frustrations, and seems to put him in an uncomfortable spotlight that emphasizes that he is not “normal”. But, I liked a definition of bravery that he eventually comes to accept. Bravery doesn’t mean fearlessness. Bravery is when you decide to do something, despite the fear it causes you. This applies to everybody and to most of our actions. We constantly fight against our fears, to rise above it, and accomplish that which we really want.

3. The Disability spectrum
Everyone is “disabled” to some extent, in some form or the other. No one is perfectly able-bodied or able-minded. But all of us crave for love and acceptance regardless of the condition of our body or mind - acceptance is vital in the basic hierarchy of human needs. It helps to connect with this primal need for acceptance when we consider people who are shunned due to their physical state.

I will end with one of Mark’s poems about his breathing through an iron lung:

Grasping through straws is easier;
You can see the straws.
“This most excellent canopy, the air, look you,”
Presses down upon me
At fifteen pounds per square inch,
A dense, heavy, blue-glowing ocean,
Supporting the weight of condors
That swim its churning currents.
All I get is a thin stream of it,
A finger’s width of the rope that ties me to life
As I labor like a stevedore to keep the connection.
Water wouldn’t be so circumspect;
Water would crash in like a drunken sailor,
But air is prissy and genteel,
Teasing me with its nearness and pervading intensity.
The vast, circumambient atmosphere
Allows me but ninety cubic centimeters
Of its billions of gallons and miles of sky.
I inhale it anyway,
Knowing that it will hurt
In the weary ends of my crumpled paper bag lungs.

It is remarkable that Mark kept breathing and living despite his numerous existential questions and frustrations, until his lungs finally gave in. Jessica Ju’s interesting documentary on Mark’s colorful life won an Oscar in 1997. It is heartening that Mark did eventually get recognized as an interesting human-being worthy of getting to know.

Reflections: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Henry Lee is a second generation Chinese living in Seattle. The story starts with Henry reminiscing about his life during the early 1940s - the “war years”. It was the dreadful time during the Second World War when the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor capped the hostility between Japan and the US, and Japan was actively at war with China. At such a time, there was a China town and a Japan town within Seattle, with each neighborhood rivaling against each other, and the Americans ostracizing both. One can imagine how much more exceedingly difficult and frustrating it would have been for a second generation Chinese to live in a time and place that was so prejudiced, hostile (and ignorant) about Asians in general that Henry’s dad made him wear an embarrassing button that said “I am Chinese”. Bullied by the white kids, pressured and addled by his parents’ stance that he should adopt just the right amounts of Americanism to fit in, but should remain a Chinese at his core, Henry grows up as a lonely, misfit. But when he meets Keiko, an elegant Japanese girl at school, they come together out of the deep understanding of their shunned states, and strike a bond beyond friendship. But it didn’t help that Henry’s father, a radical Chinese, hated the Japanese, and the US Government rounded up all the Japanese into concentration camps. As an old man, Henry looks back at his bitter-sweet memories of his first love and the pangs of hurt and separation as he comes across the ancient belongings left behind by the numerous Japanese families that were hounded and taken to concentration camps.

The heart of the book dwells on the tender romance between Henry and Keiko. Similar to many other stories that have reached a greater height of poignancy because of the History surrounding it,  the tragedy of war makes the story more special. Jamie Ford has very realistically brought out Henry’s personality. As American as he is in terms of his progressive attitudes, he is a devout Chinese when it comes to his conventional grounding on duties and moral responsibilities. It is a spitting portrayal of most second generation immigrants, especially of Asians.

Although I found some parts of the story to be a bit saccharine, I appreciated the overall pragmatism of the story. That’s how life is. But the pragmatism was balanced with the right amounts of sentimentality. And it always warms my heart to read about bonds that last despite the ravages of time and memories. Ford also depicts how distant most civilians are from wars and political turmoil. People are often put into buckets because of their race, and not for who they really are. It was stirring to read about the perplexed Japanese who were legal Americans with no ties to their country of origin, being forced to pay a hefty price for their ancestry.

Digested Thoughts: This is a very quiet, reflective read - reflective in terms of the History, and quiet in terms of the pace of the book, and the gentle romance. This is the kind of romance I like - old-fashioned and deep. Almost reminiscent of Pearl Buck’s The Hidden Flower, in terms of the feel of the book. The dewy and misty backdrop of Seattle adds to the tranquil, poignant feel!