The Secret Life of Bees is narrated by a 14 year old white girl named Lily who lives on a peach farm with her father, T-Ray. Her relationship with her father is strained due to the fact that he still holds resentment over her mother’s death. When Lily was just a baby she accidentally pulled the trigger on a gun that killed her mother. T-Ray is abusive towards her and will often make her kneel on grit for hours as punishment. This will end up scraping and bruising her knees so badly she can barely walk.
The book begins with Lily in her room watching as the bees emerge from the walls. Excited, she wakes T-Ray only to anger him. Lily works on her father’s peach farm in the hot sun almost everyday. T-Ray refuses to let her really have her childhood or participate in any school activities. T-Ray also barely talks to Lily about her mother, forcing Lily to hide the few items of her mother she has. She keeps them buried under a tree in their farm. One night she is lying out there with her mother’s possessions and T-Ray comes out and assumes she is with a boy and calls her a slut. He punishes her by making her kneel on the grits. Her black housekeeper and nanny, Rosaleen, decides that she wants to register to vote. She has to learn how to write her name in perfect cursive in order to register. She also has to walk miles into town to go to the black church to register. Lily’s knees are bruised from the night before and its very hot so they take a rest inside the church T-Ray and Lily used to go to. Rosaleen steals two fans to keep her and Lilly cool in the Georgia heat. Once they get to town they see some white men hanging out by a gas station. They start giving Rosaleen a hard time and Rosaleen empties her spit jar on to their feet. The men proceed to attack Rosaleen beating her while Lilly has to just stand and watch. They then proceed to call the police and the police arrest ROSALEEN.
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