A Wonderful Mother-Daughter Story

I’ve just devoured Trav­el­ing with Pome­gran­ates, a lov­ing duet co-authored by Sue Monk Kidd and her daugh­ter, Ann Kidd Tay­lor; a story told in “braided voices.” I highly rec­om­mend it if you’re inter­ested in travel mem­oirs, life’s major pas­sages, an exam­i­na­tion of cre­ativ­ity, or the rela­tion­ship between moth­ers and daugh­ters. (And it helps if you remem­ber your Greek myths or were ever exposed to the con­cept of arche­types…)

On Becoming a Novelist

Sue Monk Kidd wrote the wildly pop­u­lar The Secret Life of Bees, her first novel.  As we learn in Pome­gran­ates, Kidd ago­nized over the deci­sion to write a novel given her long career as a non­fic­tion author. She reveals how and where she made the deci­sion to write a novel, The Secret Life of Bees, as well as what inspired many of Bees’ themes and imagery (such as the Black Madonna and bees). Trav­el­ing with Pome­gran­ates and The Secret Life of Bees are con­nected on many lev­els, both lit­er­ary and spir­i­tual.

For aspir­ing nov­el­ists her descrip­tions of emo­tional upheavals, cre­ative fer­ment, sources of inspi­ra­tion, spir­i­tual “moments of truth” and an ongo­ing bat­tle with self-esteem offer a pre­cious peek into the cre­ative process.

The … surge of cre­ativ­ity I’ve felt…. Where does the impro­vi­sa­tion, the free­dom, the hint of new author­ity and potency come from? Images well up in me more spon­ta­neously, trail­ing along a stream of ideas, mem­o­ries, feel­ings, and sym­bols, and I feel con­nected to a source­like place in myself.

Pome­gran­ates is a yummy book — I should have savored it instead of rac­ing through so I could return it to the library. It’s def­i­nitely a book to rec­om­mend to friends and re-read some­day at a more leisurely pace.

Life Passages

On the sur­face this is a travel mem­oir, a story told in alter­nat­ing voices, as mother and daugh­ter con­trast their expe­ri­ences of travel together in Greece and France. They visit key des­ti­na­tions for early Chris­t­ian pil­grims, as well as ancient God­dess sites – a sort of fem­i­nists’ jour­ney. I’ve vis­ited some of those places, and enjoyed the oppor­tu­nity to relive them through the authors’ expe­ri­ences. And even more, to learn the inspi­ra­tional sources of imagery in The Secret Life of Bees, such as the Black Madonna of Roca­madour, shown here.

But the book’s most pro­found moments occur when each author describes her feel­ings as they work through life pas­sages, and rede­fine their rela­tion­ship as they both tran­si­tion into new life stages:

• On the thresh­old of turn­ing 50, the mother is fac­ing menopause, mor­tal­ity (her own and her mother’s), and is think­ing about unre­solved rela­tion­ship issues with her mother and her daugh­ter.
• The daugh­ter has just grad­u­ated from col­lege, is still ago­niz­ing over her rejec­tion from grad school, suf­fers from low self-esteem, and does not yet know who or what she wants to be.

For her fel­low Baby Boomers, the most poignant moments occur when Sue Monk Kidd writes about the pain of leav­ing youth behind while not yet ready to embrace what she calls “The Old Woman.” And then she describes the joy and release of accep­tance. Here’s a sam­ple, writ­ten toward the end of the book when she begins to embrace “the final third of my life”:

By Christ­mas, the need to exam­ine my face for lines and sags left me. I rec­og­nized the grow­ing per­mu­ta­tions as more than the effects of time. They became a poignant his­tory – trac­ings of my expe­ri­ence and char­ac­ter, the pas­sion­ate indi­vid­u­al­ity of my soul, the story of lived life writ­ten in the ten­der­ness of skin. I began to find a worn beauty in all of that. I could never cut it away.

Need­less to say the title’s ref­er­ence to pome­gran­ates is laden with sym­bol­ism and ref­er­ences to Greek myths, fer­til­ity, and other imagery.

Happy read­ing!