THE INVENTION OF WINGS by Sue Monk Kidd, published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Group(USA) LLC, in 2014. I really enjoyed this fictional story based on several women, two slaves and two southern women who did not follow the norm of the south in the 1800's. Though the slaves are fictional characters, the story follows them and their relationship to the women who would become abolitionist and banned from their own birthplace.
You are drawn immediately into the story, which starts off with Hetty Handful Grimke, daughter of the slave Charlotte. We meet her recounting the story her mother told her about the nubs on her shoulders being the place for blackbird wings, a story her mother was told when she was a little girl. Then we meet Sarah Grimke on the occasion of her 11th birthday, who had witnessed a slave being beaten as a child and had trouble talking from that point on. On her 11th birthday her mother presents her with her own personal slave, Hetty. Sarah immediately balks at the idea, even going as far as writing up an emancipation paper for Hetty, which her dad tears up.
Sarah's dreams of becoming a lawyer are encouraged and discouraged at the same time, she is told by her mother it is time to give up her dreams like all women do. Don't you just love the 1800's. Her mother who is known as Missus, she becomes pregnant with her last child and Sarah asks to be the Godparent, instilling in Angelina the same drive she was denied.
The story moves fast and I was happy to know that Angelina and Sarah Grimke were real people who did fight against slavery and fought for women's rights. I am currently looking for their biography so that I can read more about the sisters.
Great book, very vivid, full of lovely characters and descriptions.
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