On Friday, February 19, 2016 the literature world lost an inspiring voice that penned a book that folks either love or love to hate. Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, won my heart at 10 years old when I received my very own hardback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird from my Aunt Kathy for a Christmas. I had read through my mother's copy and enjoyed it... But through the years as I continued to read it over and over at least twice a year... I began to not only fall in love with the lyrical descriptions of that southern set small town and the captivating characters in the book but also for the author herself.
Ms. Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, a small town in southern Alabama that I had visited numerous times and reminded me much of my own childhood hometown of Evergreen, Alabama. The plot and characters are said to be loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children. The novel was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.... This is something I understood quite well having grown up in a town that even in the 1980's seemed to hold a distinct racial divide. Beyond that the description of the town itself... Courthouse, main square that held all the town's shops, businesses, and events... Houses and descriptions of people that seemed plucked from my life.
She continued to start and stop her writings, filing them away unfinished and unsatisfied....this I can most definitely relate to. I have tons of handwritten starts in notebooks and typed online...of stories and thoughts and ideas.... That I've never completed. Never felt satisfied with, never shared....Just like her novel was controversal and banned from certain book clubs and schools, perhaps i feel some of my thoughts might stir up controversy... Something Ive felt in the last few months of some of my writings....unitentionally.... And from the time of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird until her death in 2016, Lee granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, with the exception of a few short essays, published nothing further, until 2015. I certainly admired that about her most. She poured her heart into a book, not for the fame and fortune, but simply for the words on the page that were expressed.
In February 2015, Lee's lawyer, released a statement confirming the publication of a second novel, Go Set a Watchman. Written in the mid-1950s, the book was controversially published in July 2015 as a "sequel" of To Kill a Mockingbird, though it has since been confirmed to be Mockingbird's first draft.
I read and enjoyed this novel also... But nothing will ever capture my heart like To Kill a Mockingbird.... I think because it takes me to a simpler time and place in my own life... Where yes, controversial things went on... But seeing them from the view of a child, growing and discovering your own opinions on events...
Just to read it, reconquers memories of the smell of honeysuckle, walking or riding my bike with my sister past old houses where rocking chairs sat empty on wrap around wooden porches... While ladies trimmed roses or picked summer vegetables, wearing gardening gloves and wide brimmed hats... Where men met at my papas feed store to say hello or at the local smoke filled waffle house for their morning cup of coffee before heading off to their daily task at the post office or bank...
A time where I could clearly see red birds fluttering around bright azalea bushes, hummingbirds flapping their busy bee wings sipping nectar and occasionaly catch the song of a mockingbird...
"Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy."
Nelle Harper Lee 1926-2016
