The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
By: Maddy N. Clark-2nd Period
The Secret Life of Bees is about a young girl named Lily searching for proof that her mother loved her. She goes from Sylvan, North Carolina, to Tiburon, North Carolina searching for the woman (August Boatwright) with whom her mother stayed with. While on her search Lily discovers that she is able to be loved and that she too can love someone. Lily finds that love doesn't have to mean you're related and that you can find it anywhere.
"Every little thing just wants to be loved."
"Most people don't have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don't know anything about."
Black Madonna Honey
Black Madonna Honey relates to the book because the label is how Lily found August and August makes her living from the honey.
Black Madonna
Black Madonna is the Black Mary of the Boatwright family.
The Queen Bee
The Queen Bee is the mother of all of the bee's and all of the bees protect her. She is mentioned a lot throughout the book.
Lily is a wonderfully petulant and self-absorbed adolescent, and Kidd deftly portrays her sense of injustice as it expands to accommodate broader social evils. At the same time the political aspects of Lily's growth never threaten to overwhelm the personal. The core of this story is Lily's search for a mother, and she finds one in a place she never expected.... She finds her Madonna in a woman named August Boatwright, the proprietor of a honey farm that's a harbor of quiet civility. August and her sisters, June and May, are no mere vehicles for Lily's salvation; they are individuals as fully imagined as the sweltering, kudzu-carpeted landscape that surrounds them. -The New York Times Book Review