has journeyed with me since college and whose bravery during the past year both inspired and deepened me. No words can ever express my gratitude for each of them.
VIKING READERS GUIDE
The Invention of Wings
An Introduction to The Invention of Wings
The Invention of Wings, a powerful and sweeping historical novel by Sue Monk Kidd, begins, fittingly, with an image of flight: Hetty “Handful,” who has grown up as a slave in early-nineteenth-century Charleston, recalls the night her mother told her that her ancestors in Africa could fly over trees and clouds. That day, Handful’s mother, Charlotte, gave her daughter the gift of hope—the possibility that someday she might regain her wings and fly to freedom. Throughout Kidd’s exquisitely written story, Handful struggles, sometimes with quiet dissidence, sometimes with open rebellion, to cultivate a belief in the invincibility of her spirit and in the sacred truth that one does not need actual wings in order to rise.
Barely a stone’s throw from the slave quarters where Handful and her mother share a room behind the grand Grimké house, another young woman fights a different battle with the constraints of her society. Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter of a wealthy and prominent family at the pinnacle of Charleston’s social hierarchy—the daughter her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. From the time of her first violent childhood confrontation with slavery, Sarah is unable to abide the oppression and brutality of the slave system that surrounds her. Ambitious and keenly intelligent, she harbors an intense longing to have a voice in the world and to follow her father’s and brothers’ footsteps to a profession in the law. Crushed by the strictures that her family and society impose on women, Sarah forges a tortuous yet brave path toward abolition and women’s rights—a crusade in which she will be joined by her fiery sister Angelina.
The story begins on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when ten-year-old Handful is abruptly pulled from the Grimkés’ work yard, adorned in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah tries in vain to decline, but over time, the two create a bond that will ultimately and dramatically shape their destinies.
As their intertwined stories unfold in their own voices, Sarah will eventually break from the only life she knows and go north to become an exile, encountering love and heartbreak, repression and renaissance as she searches for her voice and her place of belonging. Back home, Handful will experience her mother’s mysterious disappearance, finding strength and answers in the story quilt she leaves behind. When Denmark Vesey, a free black man with messianic charisma, plots a dangerous slave insurrection in the heart of Charleston, Handful becomes embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens to shake the city to its foundations.
Inspired by actual historical figures like Sarah and Angelina Grimké and Denmark Vesey and enlivened by original creations like Charlotte and Handful, The Invention of Wings is the extraordinary story of two struggles for freedom: the battle of Handful to find the wings her mother promised and the equally intense quest of Sarah to liberate her mind and spirit. This triumphant novel also speaks with wisdom about the nature of evil and injustice, the courage to dare what seems unattainable, and the hope inside of us that the worst darkness can’t extinguish.
About Sue Monk Kidd
Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel, The Secret Life of Bees (2002), became a genuine literary phenomenon, selling more than six million copies in the United States and remaining on The New York Times bestseller list for more than two years. Named Book Sense Book of the Year in 2004, it was adapted into an award-winning movie. Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair (2005), sold more than a million copies and garnered the Quill Award for General Fiction. She has cowritten a bestselling memoir with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (2009), as well as authoring several acclaimed memoirs, including The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996). Kidd lives in southwest Florida with her husband, Sandy, and their black Labrador retriever.
A Conversation with Sue Monk Kidd
1. You had never heard of the Grimké sisters before you received the inspiration for The Invention of Wings. How did you first hear about them, and what was it about their story that captivated you?
I first came upon the Grimké sisters in 2007 while visiting Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Their names were listed on the Heritage Panels, which