Sue Monk Kidd pens memoir with daughter

Authors appearance

Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor will discuss "Traveling with Pomegranates" at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Durham County Library, 300 N. Roxboro St., Durham.

"Traveling With Pomegranates"

By Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

(Viking Books, hardcover, $25.95, 282 pages)

BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN

dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563

DURHAM -- Sue Monk Kidd's relationship with her daughter has only grown closer over the past decade since they traveled together during a time of change for them both. Between 1998 and 2000, Kidd grappled with turning 50, entering her "third act" of life and pursuing her idea to write fiction and develop a story about bees. Her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, was a recent college graduate who was rejected from the graduate school of her choice and searching for a career that would light her "inner fire."

Kidd's launch into fiction was, of course, the novel that sold millions and was recently made into a movie -- "The Secret Life of Bees." Taylor found her fire in writing, and her first book is the dual memoir of the mother-daughter trips, the just published "Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story."

The best-selling author and her daughter spoke to The Herald-Sun from Kidd's house in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday during a home stop in the midst of their tour. Kidd and Taylor get adjoining rooms and share breakfast and late night dinners together on their excursions. They'll also ask each other about outfits they're wearing. Traveling with her daughter makes book tours twice as fun, Kidd said. Saturday they'll be in Durham for an appearance at the main library downtown.

"Traveling With Pomegranates" covers the women's trips to Greece, Turkey and France as well as time between in South Carolina, when Taylor got married. Their travels take them to see symbols and historic places of women like Demeter and Persephone of Greek mythology as well as Athena, and also images of Mary including black Madonnas.

The first trip, in 1998, was a graduation gift to Taylor, whose previous trip to Greece as an undergraduate history major led her to choose a career studying ancient Greece. But when she didn't get into the graduate program she wanted, she internalized the rejection and searched for a new direction to launch her career. In "Traveling With Pomegranates," as she searches for her "inner fire," she discovers it is the same inner fire as her mother's -- writing. So Taylor decides she will take her own version of a seven-year apprenticeship and learn how to write. She worked as an editorial assistant for Skirt! magazine in Charleston, which published some of her writing, then quit to concentrate entirely on writing. In 2003, she asked her mother to co-write a book with her. Taylor had found that the story of her travels was not hers alone, but intertwined with Kidd's experience as well.

They drew from their journals during that time, which each wrote in frequently. Kidd said writing in a journal is more than just a habit -- it is important to her.

"It's a creatively, spiritually way of knowing myself," she said. "When you travel, you don't want to miss a thing."

Taylor said carrying a journal on their excursions was as natural as packing bottled water and snacks along with it in her bag. They also took a lot of photographs, video and sound recordings, but didn't include images in the book because it would have been tough to decide what to include and exclude.

"You could read this as a travel book, but that's not what this is. It's a mother-daughter book," Kidd said. "We hope the reader might take away relationships to their mothers, to their daughters, and that they evolve and change at necessary moments."

While Taylor was searching for direction, Kidd was dealing with turning 50 and the image of becoming an older woman. It was a crossroads in their relationship, Kidd said, and they were experiencing a lot of distance. While she has since reached her 60th birthday as well, it was 50 that was the moment for coming to terms with being older, she said.

It was during what Kidd describes as her "third act" of life that her writing career took off in a new direction, with "The Secret Life of Bees." In "Traveling With Pomegranates" she wears a little bee charm on a chain and writes about how the story comes together in her mind. It crystallized in Turkey, she said, an experience she describes in the book. Kidd also discusses the fears about moving to fiction from nonfiction, where she already had success with "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter."

In 2003, she was about to start working on a second novel, "The Mermaid Chair," when Taylor approached her about writing together. When Taylor was writing about her own travels, she realized she was only telling half the story.

Looking back now on that 22-year-old who pined for Greece, Taylor said she has an endearing feeling for the country and experiences, but not a desire to study it more.

"I'm very content now with my home and my little boy and my family close by," she said. Taylor's son is 6. Becoming a mother has deepened her relationship with her mother. "Watching her be a grandma brought us so much closer," Taylor said. "I'm experiencing the same things she has experienced. It brought us closer. We have more conversations, though we talk about a lot of things. We're just really good friends."

The mother-daughter friends are planning another trip together, possibly this spring, to England. They don't plan to write another dual memoir, just as they didn't plan to write one during their travels to Greece. But one never knows, Kidd said. Taylor said if she writes again, she'll try fiction.

"Writing with my mom was an incredible experience for me not only as a writer, but as a daughter," she said.