Seeing the Story – Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)

Poster for film: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood | Movie Poster Source: Wikipedia

Seeing the Story/ Review of Book to Screen Adaptation

Released in 2002.

All screen adaptations will be referred to in the following format “Title (Date).”

4/5 Just a week ago, I posted my Starlight Book Review (SBR) of Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a book I read twenty years after I saw the screen adaptation which it inspired. While the film factored into my opinions while reading the book, I felt my memory of the Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) movie somewhat faded enough to separate the two. Of course, I recently re-watched the film in planning for this post <smile>.

Click here to read my SBR of Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Click here to learn more about the Back in the Day SRC.

“Siddalee Walker (Sandra Bullock), a famous New York City playwright, is quoted in Time Magazine and infuriates her dramatic, Southern mother. A long-distant fight wages until her mother’s friends (and members of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) kidnap Siddalee and take her “home” to the South, where they hope to explain her mother’s history and to patch up the rift between mother and daughter.”—kzmckeown

I enjoyed watching Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). I felt Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, and the rest of the cast made their respective characters and roles their own. Both the book and the film possessed the same flavor, somewhat of a neighbor to my own experience with the chief setting of Louisiana. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) stands quite well on its own but reading Wells’ book enriched my second viewing of the film. With that being said, my brain accepts that changes in adaptations must happen but my heart ached at these plot alterations. As to not spoil too much here, I only mention the one where Vivi’s Ya-Yas come up to New York City to “bring” Siddalee down to her hometown at the beginning of the film. So, for this and other switches in the plot, I knocked off a star in my rating.

Quotes come from description on IMDb and are featured on color blocks. Click here to access this webpage.

Starlight Book Review – Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Cover of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells centered on a light medium green background with Starry Night Elf avatar in lower right hand corner | Cover Image Source: Goodreads

Back in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1990s

Published 1996

Trigger Warnings – abuse/child neglect/ racism/sexism/ substance abuse/ violence

4.2/5 I remember my mom taking me to see Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) when the film hit screens during a summer break from college. Mom also read the book by Rebecca Wells which inspired the movie of the same name. Yet, I probably did not mentally slide Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood until I read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point… Still, I never made my way back to this book until last month when I sought out literature published in the 1990s for the Back in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC). Click here for details on this SRC. I wanted a book closer to my typical reading but not in a genre I recently read in the latter part of 2022. It pleased me that I located a copy of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood to read.

“When Siddalee Walker, oldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, Ya-Ya extraordinaire, is interviewed in the New York Times about a hit play she’s directed, her mother gets described as a “tap-dancing child abuser.” Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda. Devastated, Sidda begs forgiveness, and postpones her upcoming wedding. All looks bleak until the Ya-Yas step in and convince Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of their girlhood mementos, called “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.” As Sidda struggles to analyze her mother, she comes face to face with the tangled beauty of imperfect love, and the fact that forgiveness, more than understanding, is often what the heart longs for.”

Since growing up in Houston, not two hundred miles from Louisiana, and being close to my mom, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood seemed both familiar and redolent with home and family. I marveled at the bond between Ya-Yas Vivi, Caro, Teensy, and Necie. I appreciated how this book plunged back in time to the 1930s and the beginnings of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood as well as points in Siddalee’s 1993. I found the correspondence between characters dynamic. Some points I set aside the book at some of the abuse, neglect, and racial statements made me uncomfortable. Yet, I must add that I found that Wells related the tale, warts and all, rather than endorsed these thoughts or behaviors.

Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.