While Sue was too busy to give me an interview, they did send along this fascinating narrative of how she came to write The Invention of Wings (click here to read my review of the book)
Q. How did you approach writing an enslaved character? How did Hetty Handful Grimké come about?
SMK. From the moment I decided to write about the historical figure of Sarah Grimké, I was compelled to also create the story of an enslaved character that could be entwined with Sarah’s. In fact, I felt that I couldn’t write the novel otherwise, that both worlds would have to be represented. Then I discovered that at the age of eleven, Sarah was given a ten-year-old slave named Hetty to be her handmaid. According to Sarah, they became close, and she defied the laws of South Carolina by teaching Hetty to read, for which they were both punished. Nothing further is known of Hetty except that she died of an unspecified disease a short while later. I knew immediately that this was the other half of the story. I wanted to try to bring Hetty to life again and imagine what might have been.
There’s an aphorism in writing that says you should write about what you know, Continue reading “An Interview with Sue Monk-Kidd”
