Little Bee is intoxicating. I was reading it today at the Doctor's office, sitting on one of those examining tables with that coarse paper rustling and ripping beneath me.
I was in the process of figuring out what happened to my hip. Which, up until last week when I started Little Bee, was all consuming, all the time. I thought quite constantly about my injury and how to fix it. I thought even more about all the hard work I'd put in only to have to give up the race in the end. I thought about, well, myself.
Something in Little Bee triggered an opposite reaction to what happened to me when reading Hornet's Nest... I started thinking about the world, the giant-ness of it, its corners and crevices, all the fields and water and all the people. I remembered just how much there is, and how much beauty, but also how much sadness.
And I have a question:
I won't spoil the story for you, but let's just stay this - a person is ask, in a very tense and life-threatening way, to do something to save someone else's life. That someone else just happens to be a young Nigerian girl, and that something just happens to be - well, painful. Very painful. I couldn't help but ask myself, almost sub-conciously, whether I would have done it, for a complete stranger, in the moment. Would I, comfortable American girl, do something completely life-altering and dangerous, in order to save the life of a complete stranger? Would you?
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