The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd. Viking, 2014.
The Grimke sisters, at the center of Kidd’s new novel, were among the 19th century’s first outspoken abolitionists and feminists, yet largely forgotten today. Most abolitionists were Northerners, whose knowledge of slavery was second- or third-hand. The Grimkes, however, had grown up in a Southern slave-holding family, and thus brought a dynamic firsthand perspective about the treatment of slaves to their writings and lecture tours. Their pamphlet “American Slavery As It Is” strongly influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose later widely-read novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin persuaded tens of thousands to oppose slavery. Continue reading “The Invention of Wings”