Caitlin's Reviews > The Secret Life of Bees

Thoroughly disappointing. Sue Monk Kidd, a white southern woman, attempts to try to show how amazing black women are, and yet ultimately falls short by making the story all about the white adolescent girl. I read a really great statement about the movie, which can be said about the book: "Despite [the writer] Ms. Prince-Bythewood’s best efforts to retain a sense of history, and [August Boatwright] Queen Latifah’s shrewd refusal to play her character according to stereotype, the film becomes a familiar and tired fable of black selflessness, in which African-Americans take time out from their struggle against oppression to lift the battered self-esteem of white people who have the good sense not to be snarling bigots. Even [protagonist Lily Owens] Ms. Fanning, weeping on cue and looking uncomfortable otherwise, seems a little abashed that the movie, in the end, has to be all about her."

It took me forever to get through this book. For the life of me, it seems sort of pointless to have done so.

Yet another white woman using fiction to erase her guilt.