history of racial injustices and divides.
From an interview, the author relates:
"I grew up amid the backdrop of separate water fountains, black maids riding in the back
seats of white ladies cars, Rosa Parks, and Civil Rights marches. One of my earliest
memories is seeing the Ku Klux Klan on the street in my small hometown in Georgia
and the absolute terror I felt. I was thrteen when Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed in
the town where I was born, twenty miles from where I then lived. I graduated from the
first integrated class at my high school, and I can still see the barrage of balled up notebook
paper that was thrown at black students as they walked to class, a scene that ended up in the
pages of "The Secret Life of Bee." This is the stuff of my childhood and adolescence; its the
stuff of my history.....I believe I've been drawn to write about racial themes because they
are part of me, and also becasuse they matter deeply to me....Racism is the great wound
and sin of the South and indeed, the great wound and original sin of America. Two hundred
and forty-six yars of slavery was an American holocaust, and its legacy is racism."
Come join the "The Invention of Wings" discussion on December 8th.