What I Love: a writing task inspired by The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I start by showing the students the book and asking them to guess what they think it might be about. Then I tell students a brief summary of the story. I try to engage students because the summary is a little bit long. I ask if any of them have been to the South, and if so to explain how things are different there. We talk a little about Mary and if any of them have ever seen a Black Madonna. Please omit or summarize as you see necessary.

Summary:

This book is told from the first person point of view of a girl named Lily. She’s about 14 years old and already she’s had a pretty tough life. Her mother died when she was really young, before she really had memories, so there is this mystery surrounding how her mother died. Lily only remembers that there was a gun and it went off, so she has this guilt about her mother’s death and thinks, on some level, that it is her fault. Lily is living with her dad and their maid, an African-American woman named Rosaleen. This book is set in the south in 1964 which was a pretty crazy time. The Civil Rights Act has just passed and Rosaleen decides she is going to vote. This could be dangerous for Rosaleen so Lily decides to go with her. They get into some trouble though and Rosaleen ends up in jail. Lily helps Rosaleen escape and the two of them run away.

Now Lily hardly remembers her mother and she has only has a few things of her mother’s. She has a photograph of her mom leaning against this old car, she has a pair of white gloves, and she has this wooden picture of a Black Madonna (a Black depiction of the Virgin Mary). On the back of this picture it says Tiburon, South Carolina. So, when Lily and Rosaleen run away, they decide to go to Tiburon, South Carolina. That’s where they meet the month sisters: August, May and June. These three black women live on a honey farm and they take in Lily and Rosaleen. Lily and Rosaleen work with the sisters on the honey farm and this scene takes place after Lily has been there a while. She’s having this conversation with May about the Black Madonna, it’s the picture the sisters glue onto every jar of honey.

I read through the passage or you could have students read it aloud or silently. Then ask: What does Lily say she loves? After this I move right into asking students to write about what they love. This can take any form, a list a paragraph, etc. We then share a few out and this is our pre-writing activity for this writing task. Over the nest few days we revise the work, write a second draft and then put together a publication of what the class loves.

Let me know if you want me to model this or team-teach the lesson/writing process with your class.

Noriko

Excerpt from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “But I never thought of the Virgin Mary being colored until I saw this picture.”

“A dark-faced Mary is not as unusual as you think,” August said. “There are hundreds of them over in Europe, places like France and Spain. The one we put on our honey is old as the hills. She’s the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia.”

“How did you learn about all that?” I asked.

She rested her hands and smiled, like this had dredged up a sweet, long-long memory. “I guess I would have to say it started with my mother’s prayer cards. She used to collect them, the way good Catholics did back then—you know, those cards with pictures of saints on them. She’d trade them like little boys traded baseball cards… I used to love to play with her cards, especially the Black Madonnas. Then, when I went off to school, I read everything I could about them. That’s how I found out about the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia.”

I tried to say Breznichar, but it didn’t come out right. “Well, I can’t say her name, but I love her picture.” I swiped the back of the label and watched August fix it on the jar, then fasten the second label beneath it as if she’d done this ten thousand times.

“What else do you love, Lily?”

No one had ever asked me this before. What did I love? Right off the bat I wanted to say I loved the picture of my mother, how she was leaning against the car with her hair looking just like mine, plus her gloves and her picture of the black Mary with the unpronounceable name, but I had to swallow that back.

I said, “Well, I love Rosaleen, and I love writing stories and poems—just give me something to write about and I will love it.” After that, I really had to think.

I said, “This may be silly, but after school I love Coca-Cola with salted peanuts poured into the bottle. And when I’m finished with it, I love turning the bottle upside down to see where it came from…

“And I love the color blue—the real bright blue like the hat May had on at the Daughters of Mary meeting. And since coming here, I’ve learned to love bees and honey.” I wanted to add, And you, I love you, but I felt too awkward.

“Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?” August said. “And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving a Coke with peanuts. Isn’t that a shame we don’t have more ways to say it(138-141)?”