Review Of Sue Monk Kidd's 'The Secret Life Of Bees'

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Sofina Lin ENG4U Ms. Mirrlees July 27, 2015 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Averhart, Cara J., Rebecca S. Bigler, and Lynn S. Liben. "Race and the Workforce: Occupational Status, Aspirations, and Stereotyping Among African American Children." Developmental Psychology. American Psychological Association, Inc., 20 Dec. 2002. Web. 26 July 2015. . This study, performed on 92 African American children (47 girls and 45 boys) from a school in the Midwest, examines whether African-American people’s perceptions of occupations and their own interests are affected by racial segregations of the workforce. The participants “were significantly more likely to say that jobs were performed by ‘only Black people’ when the jobs asked about were low…show more content…
Particularly discussing about The Secret Life of Bees, Mayfield examines African-American female identities in the novel and pinpoints the fact that coloured and white people should be considered as equals. The source indicates that Lily, the main character in the story, “[refuses] to recognize and question the cultural and historical differences that exist between the African-American sisters who become her ‘mothers’ […] and herself” (Mayfield 60). Throughout the novel, Lily possesses racial thoughts towards coloured people, but the last line of Kidd’s novel narrated by Lily reads: “They are the moons shining over me” (Kidd 302), revealing that she has finally come to accept the coloured race as equals to the white. In summary, Mayfield canvasses the identification of African-American females in The Secret Life of Bees through this piece using specific examples from the novel but also with the help of other theses, proving that coloured individuals should not be discriminated against as they can also be motherly figures, making them parallel to the white…show more content…
This source touches upon immigration policies, racial profiling and experiences of many races in Canada and around the world. The book mentions that “black men and those from other ethnic groups are seen as the perpetrators of crime, they are over-policed; they are subject to extra scrutiny, earlier intervention, and harsher sentencing” (Satzewich 70). Likewise, in The Secret Life of Bees, Zach and his friends (Negro boys) got into some trouble with white men and were arrested. It can be eruditely guessed that if white boys were in the same situation, they would have been easily left off. Conclusively, the source, published by the Oxford University Press, highlights the racial injustice and discrimination of coloured people in today’s society by providing studies and articles that further contribute to the study of racism and its affect on black people in the community. Thus, the book aids in proving the fact that racism conflictingly affects individuals and wrongly accuses innocent people just by the colour of their
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