Sue Monk Kidd | The Sun Magazine

Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd is a writer living in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Her most recent book is The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (Harper SanFrancisco). Her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, will be published by Viking in January 2002.

— From February 2001
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Slave Chair

On a spring day in 1958, I circled the table in my grandmother’s dining room, trying to figure out one of her “test tables.” The test-table challenge worked like this: My grandmother set a formal table, purposely committing an array of errors so subtle even Emily Post couldn’t spot them — turning a knife blade in the wrong direction, placing an iced-tea spoon where a soup spoon should be. My job was to do what Emily Post could not.

February 2001
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