The secret life of bees

Aria Bashizadeh Fakhar
Week 2 Journal 2
The Secret Life of Bees
“I used to have daydreams in which she [Rosaleen] was white and married to T. Ray and became my real mother. Other times, I was a Negro orphan she found in a cornfield and adopted. Once in a while I had us living in a foreign country like New York where she could adopt me and we could both stay our natural color.”
The paragraph above is really interesting to me, in that it tells us a heck of a lot of the time period and the race relations were like in a very tiny amount of text. Also, it tells us a lot about the relationship that Lily and Rosaleen have, despite the issues that people are having around them regarding her race.
The first thing that struck me in that paragraph was the quip about Rosaleen being white and being married to T. Ray. It tells me that even a young and naïve girl like Lily knows of the taboos that surround interracial marriage and the legality of it in her time period. It tells me that she knows that she’s looked down upon, but in her mind, she’s a sweet, loving and gentle person who’s race didn’t matter whatsoever, and only wanted her to be white so that she could actually marry her father. The next thing in that sentence that struck me was; “and become my real mother”. I see that Lily is already regarding her as her mother, but needs some sort of institution that she and T. Ray need to be a part of for her to be considered her “real mother”.
Lily also does not see the black race as below her. She in fact would like to be a black child so that she can be taken care of by Rosaleen in a legal manner. Lily is definitely aware of the pending issues that surround her, but she does not partake in this hateful talk and manner, all because this gentle woman has taken care of her for so long and so much better than how her father has been treating her.
Finally, we get a glimpse of what it is like in places in the north, in this case, New York. It seems as if it is acceptable for black people to adopt white children. This, to me seems like it would be especially taboo in a southern state. It would be admitting that a black woman is capable of rearing a white child, who is considered to be of a better standing, socially.