- The Help
- Putnam, 464 pp.
- CLR Rating:
Mississippi Slow Burning
Hattie McDaniel, the Academy-Award winning actress who played Mammy in Gone with the Wind reportedly once said: “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”
Of course, she didn’t have much of a choice. For McDaniel in Hollywood, like many black women throughout the United States, the only role that white folks would accept her in was a domestic one. Mammy was expected to be chief bottle washer, maid, cook, and helpmeet. She could tell outlandish stories, sing spirituals or drop pearls of wisdom – that was part of her “character” – but speaking her true mind was out. She was, to all intents and purposes, the invisible woman.
The story of these unseen women forms the basis of Kathryn Stockett’s entertaining and problematic novel, The Help. Entertaining in that it is a yarn well spun, a tale of women’s lives that has its antecedents in books like the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or The Joy Luck Club. Full of plot twists and sly humor, The Help is what you might call an old-fashioned page turner.
Problematic in that this page turner is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s, and is told from three points of view. Skeeter, an educated and prosperous young woman with no real plans for the future, is white. Aibileen and Minny, the titular help who reveal their stories, are black.
Now this, on the face of it, should not be a problem. Toni Morrison was happy to speak in the voice of white people in her recent book A Mercy and reviewers, including this one, were happy to accept the premise. There are no rules in novels (critics have fun superimposing those later).
And if you’re going to focus on the closeted, almost harem-like world of women in Jackson during the Kennedy years, choosing to speak with the voices of those who see all and hear all and ostensibly say nothing seems like a good choice.
Yet when an author treads into specific territories, the ground becomes awfully muddy. We’re happy to let writers play around with being a Roman slave of the first century or a prostitute of the eighteenth, but when it comes to depicting a person who has lived through the Holocaust or the Civil Rights era, ah, then I think we hesitate. Does an author, even in the services of fiction, have a right to appropriate these stories?
Stockett is smart enough to know she will be asked this question, and she tackles it in a number of ways. For one, she starts and finishes The Help with Aibileen’s narrative. Aibileen is middle-aged and without family – she lost a grown son to an industrial accident – but has raised seventeen white children as part of her duties. Maternal by nature, she nonetheless retains a dry sense of wit about her former charges:
And how I told him don’t drink coffee or he gone turn colored. He say he still ain’t drunk a cup of coffee and he twenty-one years old. It’s always nice seeing the kids grown up fine.
Aibileen works for Miss Leefolt, taking care of her daughter, Mae Mobley, and spends most of her time silently shielding the fat little girl from her mother’s verbal abuse.
Her friend Minny, on the other hand, has no problem with speaking her mind. Mother of five and married to an abusive drunk who works the night shift, Minny is known around Jackson as the best cook in the city and the one with the biggest mouth. If you can hear the theme tune of Gone With the Wind playing, Stockett can too:
If I’d played Mammy, I’d of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Make her own damn man-catching dress.
After insulting the queen bee of the white hive, Miss Hilly, Minny is cast out from society, eventually ending up in the employment of a scatterbrained “white-trash” Miss Celia.
Between them, Aibileen and Minny have seen a lifetime of trouble and amusement, enough to fill a library. But Stockett leaves it up to Miss Skeeter to put the plot in motion. An aspiring writer, she decides to make her reputation by secretly interviewing black maids and compiling the experiences into one book. Maybe that will be her ticket to New York.
This being Mississippi at the height of segregation, library sit-ins and NAACP assassinations, complications invariably ensue. Miss Hilly, head of the Junior League and a filthily polite racist, begins to suspect Skeeter of radical notions and sets out to gun her and her conspirators down. This isn’t an idle threat. Though a white man’s fist hurts, Aibileen notes, a white woman’s slander has the power to destroy lives:
No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.
It takes a great deal of wit and will to combat Miss Hilly – toilets feature prominently in this battle – even as all three narrators must continue to deal with their regular lives. A Marilyn Monroe look-alike loses her mind, a handsome boyfriend appears and disappears, and personal tragedies loom. A grand finale is needed to tie up all these threads, and that’s what is delivered (if a trifle too conveniently in a couple of instances).
Amidst all this hoopla, Stockett explicitly, some might say obviously, points out the narrators’ widening awareness of the larger world. She has Aibileen reading seminal books by black Americans, Skeeter growing her hair long, and Minny dealing with domestic violence.
Yet when it comes to Skeeter’s true dilemma – whether she is exploiting others for personal gain – Stockett chooses to nick the surface and move on. She is certainly careful to have Gretchen, a young maid, accuse Skeeter outright:
Another white lady trying to make a dollar off of colored people.
But it is an accusation that is never thoroughly investigated. Gretchen lasts all of a page before Aibileen firmly steps in to contradict such a notion. Similarly, to bolster Skeeter’s case, over the course of the novel Stockett ensures that her white woman becomes more of a transcriber than a writer, with the maids often dictating or typing their own stories for her to edit. They will share the profits at the end; Skeeter will merely be the enabler.
Ay, there’s the rub. For as much as The Help is a rollicking read, I still come back to the uneasy feeling that Skeeter, for all her awkward bumbling, is the narrator who truly frames the novel. Unsurprisingly, her story seems the most personal and the most convenient, the one most like Stockett’s life. Like Stockett, she grows up in Jackson and goes off to New York to make her fortune. And, like Stockett, she has the final edit on the narratives of others. Now I have never lived in the south, so I cannot answer to the truth of Aibileen and Minny’s voices and experiences. I can wonder, though, how black women of 1962 would respond to this 21st century version of themselves.
Is Minny with her outlandish catchphrases just another version of Mammy, updated for more sensitive times? Even if stories haven’t been told, is it fair for an outsider to tell them? What would Hattie McDaniel, who worked as that $7 maid before making it to Hollywood, think of this book?
These may not be fair questions to ask of a novel that sets out to entertain and does so with great panache, but, being a dour reviewer, I’ll ask them anyway.
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February 9th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Hi Elinor Teele–
I appreciated reading your well-written and thought-provoking review.
“Even if stories haven’t been told, is it fair for an outsider to tell them?” Intriguing question. Of course, Harriett Beecher Stowe, New Englander or not, told of Uncle Tom’s ordeal to good effect.
For this writer, the question becomes how well the writer tells the story,and to what effect. My understanding of the review is that “The Help” is purely for entertainment; by no means a bad thing. In looking for levity as opposed to serious history or social commentary, Kathryn Stockett is given a broad playing field indeed.
Best Regards,
John R. Guthrie
February 15th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
LET’S ASK MINNY:
Elinor, first of all let me begin by saying that I truly enjoyed reading this review as you raised some interesting questions, but I would be remiss if I didn’t respond. As a black woman, I am thrilled that Kathryn Stockett, a white woman, had the courage to tell the stories. She crafted complex, strong, moral, loyal and need I say it, intelligent women, in Minny and Aibileen. Usually in literature, black women are relegated to being one dimensional, stereotypical characters: all nurturing, asexual, or completely invisible servants. So, I applaud her for at least giving these women emotional depth.
Second, you question the veracity of Minny or Aibileen’s voices. This tells me that you have not spent much time in the south, because any one who has, will surely feel the authenticity of these characters and their circumstances. I can state emphatically that Minny was my mother. She was an opinionated, strong, hardworking, sassy, progressive, MAID,
Finally, I think you posed the question, ‘what gives her the right to tell these stories, in the voice that she chose.’ My response to that is simple, she’s human. My interpretation of the story is that we are all human. What better way to demonstrate that than taking America back in time to an ugly part of her history, and showing through the experiences of these provocative characters that beautiful, human side. A writer needn’t be black or white to tell these stories, just truthful.
Kathryn Stockett should be lauded for writing brave characters in a time where bravery came at the ultimate price.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Hi John and Octavia,
Thanks for the comments! They’re all part of a debate that interests me as a writer (as opposed to a reviewer)- how do we get at the truth of another person’s experiences? Do the best stories come from one’s own life or a sympathetic imagining of another’s? I don’t have any answers for these questions, but I wanted to throw the ideas into the mix with my review. I also want to reiterate that I really enjoyed Stockett’s writing and mention (third to last paragraph) that I included the caveat that I’ve never lived in the South.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
“The Help” which takes place during the civil rights era gives witness to a unique transcendance that occurred during this period and the three main characters reinforce that story. The contradictions of southern bigotry and class as related to domestic help represented by these characters brought back so many memories. The mixed messages that those of us raised by black women witnessed are all there. The nurturing and genuine nature of these relationships defies all reasonableness and belief given the bigotry and hatred of the time, which is probably why the validity of these characters is questionned. Even as children, we knew as Mae Mobley and Skeeter did that this love defied what was the norm. It was not present with all families, there were many black and white who felt the need to be separate, which is evident in Minny’s Mother’s instructions to her about how to be a maid. The change these black women, portrayed as Aibileen and Constantine, made in the hearts of their charges has been beautifully expressed and was a source of pride for many former maids. I, too, knew how many others had been raised before me and how much they were loved. The book celebrates this transcendance and I thank Kathryn for understanding the contradictions.
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Last I heard stealing was the act of taking and depriving someone of something they owned.
It’s ridiculous to accuse a fiction writer of stealing someone else’s narrative – the act of owning your imagination does not deprive anyone else of their own.
If writers are not allowed to explore the viewpoints of others unlike themselves how poor the genre would be. And what kind of intellectual fascism is that?
Kathryn Stockett isn’t proclaiming to write *on behalf* of black people in Mississippi and naturally the story that is closest to her own is going to be the richest. Rare is the writer who could do otherwise.
When I see these kinds of accusations it makes me think that the writer is angry at themselves for not writing the story, of not having their thoughts represented. Have at it.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Kathryn Sockett is a white woman who grew up in the South with black help. As long as no one thinks it’s anything other than a privileged white woman’s take on what it must have been like to be black domestic help among privileged white people, then there’s no debate. However, what I hear in my small Southern town (from the privileged white women who are buying this book) is what a great thing Stockett has done for the voice of the black maid–and that’s about as deep as it gets. What I hear is “We really DID love our maid, Eddie Mae, and she LOVED us–she took CARE of us!!” and “We have always been so GOOD to our help–we give them so many extras!” My favorite line is “You better watch out–your help really KNOWS more than you think.” It’s just a story–no more than a beach read, and not a very good one at that. The fact that this book has gotten so much ink as a serious work of fiction is appalling. It is poorly written, embarrassingly trite, and condescending to literate people. I’m not a writer, so to the person who sent the email above, I am far from jealous! I am embarrassed–as an avid reader and as a Southerner, that anyone thinks that narrative has any historic merit. If The Help turns out to be a jumping off point for the REAL story of what it was like to be black in Mississippi in the 60′s–well, then that would make it worth something.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:43 am
I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book!
I enjoyed all the characters and story lines.
September 19th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
THE HELP has been recommended to me by many friends whose opinions and tastes I normally share. I must admit, however, that I am having lots of problems with this book. Primarily I think Stockett’s use of African American dialect is overused and inaccurate. Skilled writers can give readers a flavor of dialect by using it carefully and judiciously. A writer doesn’t have to render every speech by a character as precisely and phonetically as that character would speak. Besides, I don’t think she is particularly precise. I taught for many years in the South in a school whose population was quite diverse. I never heard an African American student say, for example, “pneumonia” when he/she meant “ammonia.” Many native Southerns say “I shoulda told the truth,” rather than the more careful and precise, “I should have told the truth” or even “I should’ve told the truth,” not just African Americans, but I soon wearied of Stockett’s consistent and overuse of “a” for “have” and “of” in rendering the thoughts and speech of her black characters. Also, I found it careless on Stockett’s or her editors’ part that she consistently spells “all right” as “alright.” Few careful writers (unless you have the status of a Cormac McCarthy) use this unconventional spelling. These are “nit picking” matters. More important, I believe, are some of the deep-seated issues that Teele addresses in her review.
October 10th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I loved this story and am so glad it was told. I am looking forward to the discussion at my book club next month.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:15 am
After reading the book The Help, I found this a very moving book. Of how White America treated the Black people. Some treated them well, others did not.
I remember having been born in 1954, some of the things spoken of in this book and how black’s were treated.
It takes lots of courage for Kathryn Stockett to write a moving novel.
Even though it doesn’t say much for us the white folk whom treated Blacks the way they did, but the truth needs to told.
And it lets us know, no matter what color we are we are still His children, and we should treat everyone alike.
Thank you for writing the book Kathryn Stockett.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I find the reviews quite interesting. I’m a white woman, raised in Mount Airy, a racially integrated Philadelphia neighborhood, at a time when integrated meant, “separated by the train tracks.” I was immediately uncomfortable with the dialect in which Aibileen tells her story. It feels forced. And, I was uncomfortable with the fact that this is a white author telling the story of “The Help.” I always grapple with this issue–when a woman tries to tell a man’s story; or a man, a woman’s. This is what literature does, right? It allows us to enter another reality…and I think that goes for the author as well as the reader. Still, I’m uncomfortable. And, two chapters in, I have the sense that there will be little that isn’t predictable, and few sentences I’d be captured by. I still think the topic is important, and I like the fact that a white author took it on.
When I was three, a black caretaker that my mother employed one day a week to take care of me while she spent the day shopping, had a heart attack while I was napping. I remember climbing over her body to sit on my potty seat. She pulled herself into my brothers’ room but wouldn’t lie down on the bed. “Mrs. McVeigh, I’d never lay down on your bed,” my mom later told me she said. My mother was horrified, but clearly she hadn’t done enough to contradict the notion that this wasn’t acceptable. The woman’s name was India. She was carried down the stairs and put in an ambulance. She died the next day. It is perhaps my earliest memory and still affects my own story about race and injustice. So…I want to like this book, to find something resonant in it. I’ll try to stick with it, but I’m looking for more than a “good read” or a “beach book” (spare me). I’d just love to hear this story from another perspective.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:44 am
How can an English major, author of a best selling book consistantly misspell “all right?” I am reading THE HELP and I cringe every time I read “alright.”
October 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am
P.S. Maybe Kathryn Stockett should have majored in English at Ole Miss!!! :)
October 20th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I read this book and believe me, I could not get enough of it; couldn’t wait to read it and was sad to see it end. I have not read a book this good in quite some time. First of all, this book is written as fiction, so there is nothing specific on which to base a lot of the details other than the experience upon which the author has drawn to tell the story. Having said that, there are many historical events in the book that are told with accuracy relative to the socio-economic climate of that time, specifically in the south. For those who question the language used by some of the characters as inaccurate, I would venture to say they have never lived in the south, and perhaps never had any relationships with others who have strong southern roots. I lived in the south as a child for a few years and based on my recollection, nothing in the dialogue(s) seems far-fetched to me.
It is unbelievable to me that anyone feels a white woman cannot tell the story of black women, which I believe in and of itself, is a statement that perpetuates an element of racism. Skeeter had a unique sense of compassion and understanding of the women with whom she wrote her book in this story. She was dealing with her own issues; a white woman, and privileged at that. However, she was living her life in a world in which she did not feel comfortable, let alone accepted. She did not fit into the circle of friends that she was expected to be a part of and eventually, she was a social outcast because of views she was suspected to carry; because she was an individual not inclined to follow the Queen Bee . . . Ms. Hilly . . . which is more than can be said for the other women in that circle of “friends”. These are the mean girls that grow up to be mean women; judge every book by its cover, and in the case of this story, particularly by the color of one’s skin. Also, in spite of her attraction to and desire to be with Stuart, Skeeter was true to herself and to the women on whose behalf she completed the book, which makes her the perfect story-teller; likewise for the author of this book, who reflected on her own personal experiences to write “The Help”.
For those who don’t just want a “good read” or a “beach book” perhaps “Anna Karenina” or “War & Peace” would be a good choice.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Thanks to all who have commented thus far since I am still
thinking thinking thinking after finishing The Help at 2:00 am. Your questions and comments are helpful as I continue to process. I am not an English major.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Like many, I stayed up late at night reading The Help as its description as a “real page turner” is extremely accurate.
Interesting though, that Kathryn Stockett did not include any young, educated middle class white women, Skeeter’s age, in Jackson MI who weren’t in the Junior League. There were plenty of these women and many of them were interested in the Civil Rights Movement and social equality. But they weren’t “Junior League Material” because they didn’t have the status, money or correct religion. I know, because I was one of these women. I watched the “Skeeters” float by at the country club and not give the non-Junior Leaguers the time of day. Why did I get the feeling Skeeter did this even after she was blackballed by her friends?
Unfortunately, though Skeeter is woken up to the injustices of the south, she isn’t enlightened enough to consider that her own white social class system excludes people and makes them feel “less” than they are because they don’t come from cotton or money.
If there was any reason why I moved to CA in my twenties it was to get away from these kinds of white women.
I enjoyed The Help and it brought back many memories of the South. Just wish Stockett could have taken Skeeter’s revelation one step further.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:15 am
I had a hard time getting through this read and felt the majority of the characters were over-the-top cookie cutter stereotypes. I couldn’t help but get an image of the bourbon drinking Senator wearing a white suit just like Colonel Sanders, going down to the Robert E. Lee hotel with his dog named “Dixie” in tow.
As far as the majority of the characters..
“Those that were good, were very, very good…and those that were bad were horrid.” Though the author is trying to portray the mood of a nation near the height of the Civil Rights movement, I get a twinge of collective guilt coming off the pages as I read them…which was perhaps intended.
Too bad this piece wasn’t written in the 1960s. It is fictional bravery at best, although the concept is interesting, it is safe…and blessed by Oprah.
I think I noticed about three references from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but this one is just a summer read with nothing too subtle about it…so I’m betting there’s a movie screenplay not too far behind.
The thing that got me is that Skeeter ends up cutting out to New York City for a new life…and everyone else is left to fend for themselves in Jackson and clean up the mess.
I did finish the book for our book club discussion. If anything… the discussion will be lively, so that says something!
October 26th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I sit here wondering, truly wondering, what Kate would consider the “REAL story of what it was like to be a black woman living in the south” in the 60s. Apparently, Kate DOES know – and this is not it. She knows so well that this book is simply “appalling” to her. Well I’m dying to hear it!
Also having grown up in the South, I can’t for the life of my figure out what is so obviously and grotesquely wrong with KS’s characters’ POVs. Maybe they’re not accurate – I’M certainly not a black women who worked for a white family in the 60s so I couldn’t say. (And if you’re going to go THERE, why is a white woman sitting around criticizing other white women in defense of the “truths” of black women? Come on, Kate!) But “The Help” rang a bell with me, and while these are fictional characters so there is no “truth” or “non-truth” to what they felt, this book enabled me think about their real-life counterparts’ POVs in a more more intimate way than I ever had before and, I think, exactly the way I believe KS wanted.
I particularly loved that the relationships with the maids and the families were indeed complex. I didn’t find them at 2-dimentional. There was both love and hate all mixed together, and I got that. Seems pretty realistic to me.
But apparently, as someone also “from the South who reads avidly” [paraphrase] I should think this book was a mortifying shame if I want to be legitimate. I wish Kate would fill me in on what I don’t know about either identification.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:47 am
For Heaven’s sake, people, this was an extremely good book!….I, too, was sorry to see it end, even if it was a sad commentary about those times….which are, unfortunately, not that different today in Sikeston, Missouri (more cotton and money, a few hours north of Jackson, Mississippi). The vernacular was right on, and, good grief…NONE of us (not down here, anyway) says “all right”…Ole Miss English major or not…
Here’s what Merriam-Webster online has to say about it…
Main Entry: al·right
Pronunciation: \(?)o?l-?r?t, ?o?l-?\
Function: adverb or adjective
Date: 1887
The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing .
Bravo for this book!
Anne Berbling
November 1st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I am a black woman whose mother grew up in Mississippi and migrated to Chicago in the 60′s before I was born. I also have many relatives who lived Mississippi during the time period Ms Stockett writes of in “The Help”. That said I did not find the lanquage over the top or the situations unrealistic. From all that I know and have heard I feel Ms Stockett was honest and brave. I may be wrong but most of the comments seem to be from white educated people who do not have an idea ofwhat life was like there in that time in history. I am listening to the book and I am thoroughly entertained as well as saddened and intriqued. Thank Ms Stockett for a wonderfully experience.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Having grown up a middle-class white girl in a small southern town in the mid-sixties, I was bowled over by this novel in sometimes troubling and complex ways. The voices of Abileen and Minnie were echoes of the lovely voices of the black women who helped raise me. Skeeter had a narrative in this book too. Some of us did, in fact, have our “consciousnesses raised” in the late sixties to use a shamefully trite phrase. The nature of life in that time and place is difficult to explain to those who didn’t live it. Ms. Stockett does a masterful job. This is a story worth telling and I hope other writers both black and white will try.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I am 74 years old. I remember the 60s well. I have spent 10 years living with black people in both Oakland and Los Angeles. The voices of Kathryn Stockett’s women are authentic and right. Much of the horror of the Civil Rights movement is told. I loved the book.
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I loved this book-unlike some other commenters I would not put this book in the “beach book” category at all! I admire the writer for taking a chance on writing this book. I fell in love with some of the characters and grew to hate other characters. Any woman who has had a friend involved “domestic” violence-knows the agony that Minny was going through-how could she leave her husband when she had so many kids? This book is full of layers and I for one enjoyed reading this book. I don’t read fiction anymore because it seems to me that a lot of books have been dumbed down for some reason or another. But this one has made me realize that there are writers out there who have wonderful stories to tell!
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:04 am
I am an African American Woman. Born in 1951, and raised by a woman that worked for white women and raised their kid. And this book made me sick! The one thing that kept jumping out at me was the fact that the writer (Kathryn)sounded like a white woman trying to sound like a black maid – - – but kept forgetting and throwing in phrases that would never be uttered by a black person – - especially back in the day! To a white person of course this book would be wonderful! In fact, it was a white friend that raved about the book so much that I decided to check it out.
The book’s authenticity from a black perspective was non-existent
I had a very difficult time getting through it and would throw it down from time to time because the authenticity just wasn’t there. It made me gag to think that the author actually “thought” she knew enough about how black women thought and felt (even back in those times) that she could actually concoct a whole book about it! Please!
The fact that she had the gall to even attempt to write a book from a black maid’s prespective proves her ignorance. And also proves that the “help” in her time were way ahead of the game because,trust me, my mama and many others cleaned the white women houses and raised their bad kids but not a day would go buy that she did not remind us that she never, ever, wanted us to clean up behind lazy white women!
The “help” showed the face that they had to show to survive, but believe me, even back in the 60′s, the help sang a whole different tune at home! But the white folk never ever got to see the “real” face of the “help” because if they did, they probably would not have had any help!
When I finally finished the book, I thought what a waste! At the end, the writer fell back on that “happy ever after”
ending for the white girl and left the “help” holding the bag! Typical!
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Miss Connie,
All I can say is THANK YOU.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
In one hour, I will be at our book group meeting where THE HELP will be discussed. We are all white professional women and I am just waiting to hear the comments. I hope that we will not dissect the book, looking for what Stockett could have included but didn’t. Rather I hope that we will give careful consideration to the fictional characters who, by the book’s end, have endeared themselves to us like neighbors that we’ve just gotten to know but who are now moving.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Just finished it.Whether or not this is a “beach” book or not is going to be decided in the hearts of each reader.I have been naive before and maybe here I go again.
I think it will be seriously read for a long time.
I also think some of the comments are from folks who will never love a book the way this one should be loved,they’re way too smart for that.
All the comments critising the dialect are full of it.I grew up here, it reads like the gospel.
While misusing “pneumonia” for “ammonia” does not ring true today, for the early sixties it does, and not just for black folks.
December 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Elinor – your’s is a wonderful,insightful review. And I appreciate your multilayered analysis and questions. Permit me to add one more layer that may seem less important than the larger view of the deep south in the 1960′s, but it is my perspective having just finished this book. I loved this book. Let me tell you why.
I was born in 1945, and I was not reared in the South, but in Pennsylvania by an older woman, a PA. Dutch nanny, whose name was Mazie. She was all my twin sister and I knew as a mommy, for our biological mother had a stroke the day after we were born. When we were 5, as she toweled us off one Saturday night from our bath, she said, “I have to leave you next week. Your dad is marrying Anne. She will be your mommy now.” Anne….the nervous, scary, dark red-lipsticked lady who did not like children.
As white and as northern as we all happened to be, as I read this book, I knew how Mae Mobley felt as she grabbed Aibileen’s neck and pleaded with her, “Please don’t leave Aibee…”
As it happened, twenty one years later, at age 26, I accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. It was there that I was told that, “Until I could dream in Southern, I should keep my mouth shut!” I learned first hand about the cultural mores of the South.
But I found ways that I could recognize our common bond, north and south. My southern friends and colleagues told me rich stories about their nannies, stories that ring true to what is written in The Help; stories that resonated with my own.
Kathryn Stockett has given us all much more than a piercing view of the culture of the early 1960′s in Jackson, Mississippi. She has given us a glimpse of what it means to a child to be cared for by a loving presence in our home who recognizes that we are each more alike than different.
This is much, much more than a “beach read.” Thank you Kathryn Stockett for having the courage to offer it to us.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
I don’t presume to know anything beyond what I’ve read about Southern culture and racial attitudes – as a lifelong Yankee, it has always sounded like a whole different country to me. So there’s no sense in getting in the middle of the people for whom the writer’s portrayal captured some of this beautifully, and those who scorn her attempts. For me, the most moving storyline was the Aibileen-Mae Mobley relationship, and I know that is because I read this as a mother of young children. My heart broke for both of them, two people who loved one another in the purest sense, yet were kept apart by invisible barriers and small-minded people. Certainly, this also happened with Skeeter and Constantine, but even with Constantine’s death, the Aibileen-Mae Mobley story seemed more tragic. The reader wants to hope and believe along with Aibileen that the girl of four will remember what her caregiver tried to instill in her during their time together. That she will remember the feeling of being cared for, loved, paid attention to. And the unimaginable hurt for Aibileen – think of being separated from your children, then take it to a whole new level by adding on the fact that you might always be thought of by them as inferior, that they might never understand how much you loved them. And Aibileen had to go through this 17 times.
January 4th, 2010 at 5:24 am
On the recommendation of a friend I bought this book to give as a gift to my sister. I peeked inside to see if I thought it any good and couldn’t put it down. I thought it beautifully written and enjoyed the beginning, middle and end. I haven’t been able to say that about a book for a long time. I can’t speak as to whether it is “authentic” from a black maids perspective but I can appreciate the injustices portrayed from a woman’s perspective. I don’t know if the book will be considered literature. I for one am glad I didn’t wait for the beach to read it.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I agree almost whole hardly with Connie.
I was not born in the 60s but I lived a few hours from Jackson. My grandmother was a maid and ALL of her children are college educated and ALL of her grandchildren (of age) are college educated. Not once have I heard from my parents, aunts or uncles that my grandmother wanted her children to follow in her footsteps. She and my grandfather worked hard so they would have a better life. It was TIME for a better life.
I so hated the dialect in this novel. It is truly unbelieveable. I am an eduacator in a small southern town where most of the people are under educated and poor. Yes, I hear broken English constantly but never to this extent. The language was too generic for my taste especially from Aibileen who had a few years of education.
If the book gets people reading and not sitting on the couch watching tv or surfing the internet, then it has done a great job. The discussion of the book is great as well because I hope it makes people really think.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
typo:
wholehearted
January 9th, 2010 at 11:56 am
wholeheartedly
January 16th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Has anybody read both this book and any of Faulkner’s major works about the South? I chose Faulkner’s Light in August as our book club pick (in spite of some members’ reluctance). Light in August is a book that I found extremely powerful, masterful, an experience not to be missed – though difficult on many levels. Another book club member suggested we read The Help at the same time, to get another perspective. Now, I am just about to crack open The Help and finish it in time for our upcoming meeting. I find myself approaching it with some pessimism, as I cringe at the thought of a mere page-turner beach-read after my profound experience with Faulkner. Any thoughts on this? My suspicion is that someone who likes the Faulkner will not be too impressed with The Help, and a Help reader will be seriously put off by Faulkner. In both cases, the books contain back characters written by white writers.
January 19th, 2010 at 6:42 am
This book depicted exactly what I knew and loved about growing up in that time period and being a woman of color. I love the book, it was everything a book should be to a reader…highly entertaining and a definite page turner! I read the other comments above and would like to know when the ney sayers are going to be printing their books(they seem to be such pros)
January 19th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
I finished The Help last night and will be discussing it at my bookclub tonight. I thoroughly enjoyed the engrossing story, but was a little less impressed with the writing. The novel is definitely a step above beach read and comparing it to Faulkner is unfair to a first novelist, actually to just about any novelist!
I’ll be sharing some of your comments tonight.
Thanks for the lively perspectives and thoughts!
January 24th, 2010 at 1:04 am
I, too, am reading this book for a book club and am truly dreading our get together in a few days! I have heard only glowing praise for this book from the other members of the club but unfortunately find the book dreadful and hate to be the only dissenter in the group.
The premise of the book is a good one, but the writing is poor; the characters are thinly developed cliches of “The South”, the accent of the maids was forced, inaccurate and distracting and I found the story line quite boring. At least a good beach read has a compelling plot. I couldn’t empathize with any of the characters because their development was so shallow and thus didn’t find any of them believable enough to care at all what happened.
It was as though after she read few pages in her 10 grade history book on the subject, the author felt qualified to write a novel about it. By the looks of her picture she can’t be much past 40, so I don’t see how she could know about that period from first hand experience as seems to have been suggested.
I lived in the south for 10 years and am familiar with the accent the author was attempting, but she missed it by a mile! It his however possible to achieve this effect in writing. For comparison, Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn wrote some passages in a thick accent that was dead-on, as difficult as those passages were to read. SIgh, yet again I am disappointed with a modern writer attempting to create literature.
January 24th, 2010 at 1:16 am
No idea how old Stockett is, but at the end of the audiobook she discusses how the book was inspired by her own experiences growing up in Mississippi, and her family’s relationship with the black domestic who was heavily involved in raising her and her siblings. (Stockett mentions some particular characteristics of this woman–unfortunately I’m forgetting her name–that clearly show up in the depictions of Aibileen and Minny.)
Incidentally, while listening to the audiobook (which I loved) I wondered how the accents of Minny and Aibileen were portrayed on the page. I can see how it might be more jarring to read the accent than to hear it read.
January 25th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Now y’all …
Remember that the South is not monolithic–all we Southerners have some common experiences and all of us have unique experiences. There are many elements of the book that ring true enough for me that I can believe the language, dialect, and experiences could have existed somewhere to someone south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stereotypes exist because they do represent some commonalities.
I found the book enjoyable and thought provoking–isn’t that why we read?
January 26th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
I agree with Shirley! Just as the experiences of all women cannot be grouped together, neither can those of all southerners, all blacks nor all black southerners.
Having grown up in the rural south in the 1960′s, it is my experience that, for the most part, the dialect is dead on.
My mother’s “domestic help” was a sweet woman named “Listine”. As much as we knew she cared about us, we always knew that her own family was her priority. My brother and I were never “her charges”, so I cannot compare that aspect of “THE HELP” to any personal experience.
I read to learn and to be entertained or enlightened. Stockett’s first novel was a success in all of the above. To say a white woman cannot write from a black woman’s perspective is like saying a man can’t write from a woman’s perspective…….What fun would that be if we pigeon-holed our authors with that criteria?
February 11th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I am hosting book club tonight and we will be discussing The Help. I agree with those who loved the book and valued it for its glimpse into a world that seems so, so, so improbable when you’ve grown up in a small town in Wisconsin in the 50s and 60s. (really, everything was quite wonderful. We didn’t understand how sweet our lives were at the time perhaps, but in retrospect, we sure had easy, loving, peaceful, carefree lives.) I think that even if this book gets just a few people saying “Are you kidding me? I never thought about the life of a maid in the south. Seriously, is this how they lived? This book has has opened my eyes,” … then great value can be assigned to this book. It’s startling that a book that is this compelling is Stocket’s FIRST book. I can’t wait to read her next one.
February 13th, 2010 at 11:56 am
I am also an African-American woman who grew up in the 60′s and can honestly say I could not put the book down. I grew up in Maryland where my grandmother did “day’s work” for two or three white families. The experiences in Stockett’s novel were eye-opening for me, having never heard my grandmother say anything but kind words about her white employers. However, I know from listening to a friend share an experience she had in Maryland when she substituted for her grandmother that everyone’s story is not the same.
I especially recall one scene in which the woman of the house told her to wash her husband’s underwear by hand, even though she had a washing machine. The woman told her she was not being asked to do anything different. She refused and walked out immediately. To this day, she is bitter about that experience.
I applaud Stockett for writing this book. Someone had to tell the truth. Why not her?
February 15th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
I am the facilitator for discussing this book at our next book club meeting so was interested in other book club comments.
Personally, I enjoyed reading the book because the story flowed well. I also ‘learned’ from this book and like it for what it was – a depiction of the lives of people and how they differed in their approach to life – during a difficult time period for African-Americans. I am neither “black” nor “white” – but “brown”! I did not grow up in the US and so cannot comment on the accuracy of the language or the characters portrayed. What I did glean was that no matter which country’s history we look into, there were (and are) people who will nurture a superiority complex over others – it is just a matter of finding something to feel superior about, or finding something to demean others by. Sad but true. And I learned that for change to occur and humaneness to prevail and differences nulled – it has to start with a few, if not the one. This is the absolute truth – no matter what the issues are – black/white; educated/not; rich/poor; vegetarian/not; Accepting people for who they are – HUMANS!! – and seeing the good in people, books, literature, history is something that is portrayed in this book. It is a work of fiction, based on the author’s experiences, and is written such that the reader keeps reading and pondering. Isn’t that what reading is about? To make us think, and learn, and perhaps apply some of what we learn?
February 19th, 2010 at 1:28 am
I don’t have time to read fiction, so I always listen to the audiobook. The few lines of dialect that I have seen in these reviews suggest that it was very hard to write and (consequently)very hard to read. However, the actresses who read the African-American characters in the Penguin Audio edition (Bahni Turpin and Octavia Spencer)render the dialect flawlessly. These are exactly the voices I heard in Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s and that can still be heard in some pockets of the South even today. The writers who claimed that the dialect is inauthentic are both teachers. People do not speak in front of teachers the way they speak in the company of people who do not give them grades.
February 25th, 2010 at 4:48 am
I just finished The Help and really enjoyed it. A beach read?? Give me a break. Yes, it is fiction (which I read all the time) and pardon me if I was entertained and enlightened by it.
I look forward to Kathryn Stockett’s next effort.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:21 am
I am an Italian-American who grew up on Long Island in the 50s and 60s. Those complaining about the authenticity of the portrayal and dialects of blacks in The Help remind me of my brethren who complained about the portrayal of Italians in The Godfather and The Sopranos. Get a life. It’s fictional entertainment where hyperbole and stereotyping are often used to heighten the enjoyment of those who are being entertained. Hasn’t anyone ever noticed that everyday speech is vastly more disjointed and replete with “uh”s and “you know”s and “inaudible”s than you’ll ever find in a book or screenplay. I’ve listened to more than 140 unabridged books on tape and The Help was among the top five.
February 28th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
I will be giving a short review on Stockett’s novel this Thursday night as part of our library’s quarterly “book review night. Having read all of the above commentary, I beg to add a few notes as well. Having grown up in the deepest South possible, South Texas, and being of white ancestry, I can attest to the fact that, yes, these “Junior Leaguers” existed even at the junior high school level, and no, I was never included in their cadre, thankfully. We had a wonderful maid, Leola, who came in once a week to do ironing, and I didn’t realize she was a different color than I until I was probably 10 years old. We respected her and her needs, and she respected us as well.
Stockett has nailed the privileged white women’s personalities, and the “colored” women with their dialects as well. I have not had the opportunity to hear the recorded book, but plan to do so before Thursday. I thoroughly enjoyed Stockett’s first effort and look forward to her next one with great anticipation.
Oh, and by the way, we were taught that “alright” was a fully acceptable compound word!
March 6th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I am white, 64, grew up in the south, and we did not have any help. We did our own housework. Most in our neighborhood did have help.
I do not see this book as a book club selection. Unless it is a racially mixed book club, I would not waste my time attending a discussion of the book.
Most book clubs I encounter are pretty homogenous, and I can just see a room full of white women my age bragging about how wonderful their family was to the black help, which I doubt. Most were paid with old clothes, old food, and too little money.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Wonderful book. It will be discussed at our book group this Thursday. I enjoyed this commentary as it opens up much needed dialogue. The south in the 60′s unfortunately is no different than the south in 2010, whether your in the deep deep south or the north for that matter. I also think that if this was a work of non-fiction, the author would have found the sources needed to validate it as a work of non-fiction. I think she took the easy way out by calling it a work of fiction. Kudos to you Kathryn for not being afraid. Kathryn said in her interviews that she didn’t think anyone would read this work. Well, she was wrong.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Help and also enjoyed the various comments provided by other readers here. I’m just curious if all those who criticized Kathryn Stockett for being a white woman writing about a black woman’s point of view also believe that men should not write about a woman’s point of view. While I sometimes feel that a male author’s female characters are not entirely accurate, it would be nonsensical and extremely limiting to say men should not write female characters and vice versa. The situation in The Help is no different. People may agree or disagree whether the voice is accurate, but it’s ridiculous to say it was wrong of her to try.
March 20th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
I just finished The Help today. I was on a library waiting list for two months. Obviously, this book is a hit. I enjoyed the book on many, many levels. Although I was not born in the South, as an adult, I lived for several years in two different southern states including the city and state where Ms. Stockett went to college. So, on the one hand, I feel like, as a Northerner, I had some things to learn about the culture Stockett writes about, and, on the other hand, I believe that my own personal reflections on my experiences in the South allowed me to look at the book critically. Overall, I enjoyed the book and believe that one can enjoy a book and be critical of it at the same time. I dislike hearing people suggest that an enjoyable read should not be criticized at all. And I am especially bothered by the idea that in order to criticize a book you have to have written one.
It seems to me then that this discussion has turned into a debate. Either people like the book or they do not. Yet, those who have commented have strayed pretty far from Ms. Teele’s initial question concerning who gets to tell “the story.” This is a question that one of my professors used to ask (mostly white) education students as they went into urban (mostly black) schools to conduct research. Sure, on the surface, it seems that stories do not belong to anyone. Whoever feels moved to write should write the thinking goes. Yet, I think we miss the point that in the past and, I would argue, even today, a structure existed which provided unequal access to publication. So long as this is the case, people of certain groups will always have a better chance of framing and telling the stories to a large audience and, just as importantly, they will continually benefit financially from this greater access. In Stockett’s novel, all of the black women interviewed received a share of the proceeds from the book. In real life, this is hardly ever the case (and I haven’t heard that Stockett has given back financially to Hot Stack or its real-life equivalent. Who knows? Perhaps she has, but if so, the fact has not been publicized.) So, Ms. Teele’s question raises not simply the issue of who has the right to speak but who in reality gets to speak most often, what structures underlie the privilege of voice, and, I would add, whether most of us are so used to invisible structures of privilege that even when one hints at them today, we turn our minds in less troubling, more sentimental, directions. Probably the single greatest thing that I got from reading this book was how a culture of privilege could be so blind to the oppression of others. So, this is an eye opener that encourages me to look around, even at the Northern city in which I live today and ask who gets to speak and what are the social and economic implications of that power.
March 23rd, 2010 at 8:48 am
First, I enjoyed this book. I cherish good first novels.
My Southern credentials are in order and I was born in 1944. This book sits squarely in my place and time. On the other hand, I am male and white. I cannot say I have first hand experience in being female or black. I do feel I have good “windows” into both of those worlds. For 15 years I worked as the token white in a black owned and operated business and I believe I have been well instructed by mother, sister, wife and daughter in the mysteries of living a female life.
I don’t mean to waste your time authenticating myself. I would like to address issues raised in this discussion and it seems I must have certain passports and visas in order.
After legal slavery ended, de facto slavery continued in the South; enforced with Jim Crow legality and then, as the legal basis for enslavement faded, enforced with mafia-like tactics. The better lives enjoyed by middle class and upper class whites rested on the hard labor of others – mostly black. (Yes, this sort of socio-economic reality exists elsewhere, but this does not diminish the reality of the Old South.)
This is a hard truth. For whites living in the South during the period depicted in “The Help” there is little legitimate escape from the moral judgments and self judgments. The choices are either to face truth and deal with it or to deflect or deny the truth. (Some whites were exceptions, but they were few.)
Truth telling, which Ms Stockett employs, is one path out of the moral swamp. Truth telling with a good story, some humor, and characters we come to care about is a powerful prescription for regaining our humanity.
The passports and visas? Truth telling works when an author can sustain an authentic basis throughout the book. The termites of denial and deflection will be hard at work – we know this. Ms Stockett gets my validation.
I enjoyed the book. Its alignment fits with my window on the worlds of women and blacks (accepting all the limitations of the written word.) The dialog is good – sometimes perfect. Ms Stockett did a good job of capturing the place and time.
I was troubled a bit by the plotting. It was hard to suspend disbelief at the ability of Skeeter to keep her conspiracy secret: A white woman driving and parking in the black section of town night after night? Not really. I also was bothered by Skeeter’s male romantic interests. It was almost as if they were added on as an editorial suggestion after the book was drafted.
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I loved “The Help” and I am not usually fond of this kind of novel (give me Life of Pi or Foucoult’s Pendulum). I didn’t read it, I listened to the audiobook — something I frequently do as I work on my computer. The audiobook performance by the woman who reads the part of Aibilene is just spectacular. Usually I find the reading of a book to be somewhat annoying. If you liked the book in reading it (and maybe even if you didn’t) I would heartily recommend the “hearing” of it by the people who did the audiobook.
March 24th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
I am a caucasion nurse who left the Chicago area and moved to North Carolina in 1973 with my husband and chidren.This was not too long after the timeline of this novel. We saw many abuses of the black people, and we were very moved to intervene or to take issue with how these folks were treated. Having come from the north, having cared for many black patients, having had many friends and neighbors who were black, we found it most difficult to “stand by” and say or do nothing when we witnessed mistreatment. We were told by southern neighbors that we just didn’t understand. I was very happy to read this novel, and I laud the author for writing it. She wrote it in such a style that I thought it was nonfiction….like a true reflection on the actual events of the story. I thought it was well done.
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:22 am
I was born in 1952 and was bothered by the inaccuracies of time regarding language usage. Words common in later decades are incorrectly placed in common usage in this book.
Additionally, when Skeeter visits with the there is a reference to a childhood photo of Stuart and his blue eyes. Photos from the 1940′s would have been in black and white.
On top of all this, I am bothered by the whole premise of the relationship between Skeeter and the maids in the book. Why would these maids have risked their livelihoods by meeting up with Skeeter anyway? She had no rapport with them beforehand and the financial payment each received was apparently not the motivation. What would have been their motivation to align themselves with a white woman they had no reason to trust? And, to boot, Skeeter implausibly spends time with the maids after she finished interviewing them (ostensibly going over how the stories are placed in the book). Not believable.
April 7th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
I agree with Ms. Teele’s rating of the book, The Help. I did love the book but I can see there are some credulity problems with it. Having said that, it does appeal on an emotional level to those of us who love character studies and the story flows well. The women were fabulous and I loved the humor. I do think it was far more than a beach read. Comparing it with Faulkner is silly; Light in August is one of my top ten books and is in a completely different category than The Help; light years apart. That doesn’t mean one can’t enjoy both books on their own merits.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
I agree with some of the discomfort expressed about this book, although it is a “good read.”
I did want to point out to the people who are (oddly, to my mind) outraged by the use of “alright” instead of “all right” that the word (yes, word) “alright” appears in my dog-eared 1977 (we’re talking over 30 years ago, folks!) Websters Dictionary as a perfectly good word (adv or adj) and not only is there no mention that it might be nonstandard, but there is an example of usage by Gertrude Stein.
April 26th, 2010 at 11:12 am
I have not read this book, but would like to hear opinions on this question:
Should I expect challenges from a conservative community if I purchase this book for my high school library? If so, on what grounds?
April 26th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
The book rang true to me, and I was raised in Alabama by a black maid. I think Kathryn Stockett nailed it.
May 1st, 2010 at 4:49 pm
I am almost finished with the book. I’ve found the comments on this site as well as the review very interesting. My complements on having a well read, thoughtful group. of readers. I have also read almost everything by Faulkner. I read him back in the 60′s and I feel that no contemporary author could approach the subtlety and impact of his work. I feel this way partly because he was one of the first to explore the culture of racisim and to make it the dominant theme of his work. In addition to that his style is many layered and like poetry requires a lot of work on the part of the reader, which is richly rewarded when one perseveres.
As for this author’s depiction of the south and the unique culture that existed back in the 60′s. I was quite familiar with that. I am from Michigan but I went to college in Washington, D.C. and was invited by a friend to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Richmond and then to accompany her for the weekend at VMI, the “West Point of the South”. My friend’s family was lovely but all of them were right out of central casting, so to speak. Skeeter’s first date with Stuart was very much like my encounter with the young cadet who was my blind date that weekend.
Skeeter’s naivete was also very much like my own. As we arrived in Richmond, I was thirsty so I headed for the first fountain I saw. My friend caught me at the last moment-the fountain was “colored”.
May 9th, 2010 at 1:35 am
Cheryl states that photos taken in the 1940′s were black and white, and thus that Stuart’s eyes could not have been ‘blue.’ It might be a good idea for her to review some of the full-color photos taken of Hitler and his girl friend taken in the 1930′s, or better still to watch “Gone with the Wind” filmed in 1939.
To pick at this book is to miss the rich recounting by black women of their struggles and their fears as they help a white woman collect information for a book that might never be published. Remarkable!
May 9th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
I finished the book this morning, and cannot help but feel bereaved. This is by far the best book I have read in years, and have enjoyed every single page. Normally when a book is written in various perspectives it is easy to favour certain characters, but not the case here. I loved and looked forward to all of the characters and felt their pain, joys and frustrations. I laughed and cried with this one, and most importantly it has raised my awareness and certainly opened my eyes to the humiliation pain and suffering our brothers and sisters had to endure in fairly recent times. I will miss this book, and look forward to the film. (Hopefully). Please write more Kathryn Stockett.
May 11th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Didn’t care for “help”. Cookie cutter characters. Plot so-so. But – didn’t care for Avatar either! Each to his own.
May 11th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Main Entry: al·right
Pronunciation: \(?)o?l-?r?t, ?o?l-?\
Function: adverb or adjective
Date: 1887
: all right
usage The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing .
May 28th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
I just finished reading The Help. I am grateful this site is still available to allow me to post my thoughts.
I had problems getting into this book. I lived through the period and setting of this book and I look back on my childhood, during the era when Jim Crow laws were the backdrop of our everyday life, with deep ambivalence and shame. I grew up in a deeply racist community, in a family that accepted the subjugation of black people as the way things were– that the way blacks were treated was necessary because of their natural inferiority. I always knew something was wrong, but as a child, I had no ability to identify or describe how differently I thought and felt inside. I had a friend once, a black girl, who lived somewhere near my grandmother, and I kept this friendship a secret from my family. I knew almost nothing about her but I loved the time we spent together and to this day, I cannot think of those times without feeling a mix of sorrow and shame for how much better I was treated than she, just because I was white. As I grew older the way we treated blacks in our town began to bother me terribly and I began to wonder and fear what the black kids in my town, what my friend, must have thought of all that.
At first, I did not think I could read the book. The dialect really bothered me and I wondered how well a white woman could give voice to the black characters she created. I kept reading off and on, until at some point I was hooked. In the end, I loved the book, mainly because I loved the characters of each woman and was impressed at how each channeled the difficulties of their lives into something that contributed to a change for all. Stripped of its context, it is a story about the power of human relationships to support us during the worst of times and to offer the possibility of positive change.
Part of me wishes this book had been written by a black woman, so I could reflect on the experiences and thinking of someone who was closer to that lived experience, not someone who lived on the other side of it. I would have liked to bounce my assumptions off a black woman’s thinking rather than the fictional creations of another white woman. Still, I do applaud Kathryn Stockett’s courage in tackling this subject matter. I cannot help but believe that it was because she loved and was loved by, a black woman, that she was willing to explore the other side of that experience. I think that took a lot of guts.
We can argue endlessly about whether it is Stockett’s right or presumption to create black characters, but in the end, she made many of us think, and open our hearts to people who experienced our painful history from another perspective. Reconciliation can only happen when empathy and understanding lead us to forgiveness. In the end, I had to wonder is wrong with a white woman trying to explore and understand the experiences of black women to the limits of her imagination?
May 28th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Connie.
Your anger towards the “happy ever after” shocked me. Don’t you remember what Aibeleen got in the end with the paper? And whether or not this was a “happy ever after” wouldn’t you think that that is the BEST that could have happened to her? This were different back then…what did you expect? that she could retire and move into a mansion?
May 28th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Wow. This book was great!
To all of you who are upset that a white woman was giving a voice to a black woman need to keep quiet. Do you all read? Oh I’m sorry, I guess she is the first author EVER to give her characters of other races a strong dialect. I am black and I saw no problems with the dialects…sure, some of them were not spot on but at least we knew their voices…get over it and pick up another book that shows no diversity as much as Mrs. Stockett did! I assure you, you’d be MOST upset if she gave them a “white” voice and you’d still be calling her ignorant for not knowing the true voice.
June 1st, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Well, I have to write an essay in English class about the book but I have absolutely no idea what to write about!!! I need some ideas about motifs, themes, foreshadowing, and any other literary devices that are hidden in the book… Other than that, I can’t help but wonder, half-way through, is the book Skeeter is supposedly writing the book I’m reading?
Thanks a lot!! =)
June 2nd, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Here we go again. This book was awful.
We can’t get our books about OUR lives and history published,but a white woman writing about women she knows nothing about can. A black writer pushing this book would have never got a chance. Nor would they have gotten the promotion or book tours. If it was published at all,it’d be in the urban fiction section and totally forgotten abut.
It is really disturbing that every time a book portraying African Americans as subservient comes out,it’s an automatic hit. Could it be that whites really want those days of soul destroying degradation back?
Blacks who are praising this book should be ashamed. The only ones who LOVE this book are whites who think Kathryn Stockett has opened up some hidden world for them. She hasn’t.
I’ll tell you the true story of”the help”. My grandmother worked as a maid. The husband sexually harassed her every day. She despised the woman she worked for and cared NOTHING about her children. It was just a job to her. Whites seems to read this book and think even though it was the bad old days,the blacks really did love them. No,they didn’t.
I hope no self respecting black actress in Hollywood takes a part in this movie. I hope it flops like The Secret Life Of Bees did,another book where a white woman supposedly spoke for black women. This book is an insult.
June 7th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
It appears that most of us, if not all, read this book for a book club. that strikes me as funny. book clubs are taking off on this genre: easy reads, intellectually vapid, catering especially to women’s sensibities. The Help fits nicely into every category.
I think Stockett’s unveiling of her story was clever: three characters telling a compelling story with a would-be cliff hanger as a closure encouraged the reader to carry on, offering the perfect setting for a beach chair and a diet coke.
I wish I’d written it in that it’s a money maker. That would be nice to have made all that money. But what would have been so much nicer would be a book that captured the civil rights period. Stockett builds tension and then becomes afraid of it. Her story is entirely implausible, too contrived to be worthy of a book that will be remembered as a testimonial to the period. Her characters are flat and predictable, from Hilly who is entirely too bad to Aibleen herself, who is too brave, too good, who voices love for the unfortunate Mae Mobly and then abandons her when she has made the bucks from her contribution to the book within the book. She didn’t seem to mind as much as she ought–not leaving the work for that lousy white family, but leaving the child. The Black community which Stockett pretends to know, from church gatherings to her secret meetings in the Black neighborhoods, make me snicker. Skeeter’s motivation appears to me to be more about becoming a writer than to challenge the Jim Crow laws. I can’t help but wonder if Stockett’s motivation is the same–it feels that way. Skeeter’s romance is laughable, also too contrived. The most handsome of Southern men who just happens to have a change of heart for no plausable reason and Skeeter’s sacrificing her love for the benefit of the Black maids is too much for me to swallow. And her mother, whose stubborn defiance of a disease that was days from taking her was too cute. She should have died, and Skeeter should have suffered as we all do when we’ve misunderstood our mothers and they’re no longer around to make it right. That would have been interesting. And there’s so much more that doesn’t fit.
I liked reading the book but but didn’t like the book itself. I believe it’s unworthy of the attention it’s getting.
Heroes died, brave people suffered during the civil rights movement. Let’s not give credibility to a novel that trivializes and even patronizes those days of great change at a great cost.
well, that’s what I’m going to say to my book club tonight.
June 10th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Is Minny with her outlandish catchphrases just another version of Mammy, updated for more sensitive times?
Imho yes. Minny is every wisecracking, overweight, bossy black maid that writers seem to like to use as a default character for black women to this day.
Even if stories haven’t been told, is it fair for an outsider to tell them?
Most writers do research when attempting to depict another culture. Since the author admits to having only one interview with a black maid, and no interview with still living relatives of the person who served as the inspiration for the characters of Abileen and Minnie, the research was slim to none.
Had this book been about any other culture, I doubt that the author would have readily slipped into what I believe is parody. Imagine writing a book about the chinese culture in america and doing a Charlie Chan impression? That’s what I got from this novel.
What would Hattie McDaniel, who worked as that $7 maid before making it to Hollywood, think of this book?
I don’t know. But Hattie’s Oscar speech was written by the studio and not in her own voice, much like this novel.
I so wanted to enjoy this novel, but I couldn’t. It’s not just the excessively broad dialect given to the African American characters, but also the lack of accent or dialect given to the white protags, who also lived in the south.
I’m kinda of surprised at the responses from many readers who believe the writer got it right. The author loads up on “I be’s” and “she say” as if doing a bad parody. I think it takes more to depict a black character than just giving an over the top southern drawl. Like actually knowing some black people, and not just one.
It’s not just the accents or lack of accents that made this read less than enjoyable for me. Abileen was another character that some writers tend to fall back on when crafting minority characters. The noble, suffering in silence but loyal minority has been done countless times, from Last of the Mohicans, to Gunga Din, to Imitation of Life, Dancing with Wolves, The Blind Side…now we have The Help. Abileen is all virtue and no vice. A saint who neither wants or needs anything but the children she’s in charge of.
And since no one has brought it up but I saw it mentioned book by a male reader on another site, where’s the black males in the book, aside from a mention of the preacher and Minnie’s abusive husband?
Abileen is one of the main protags but she has no outside wants or interests except for attending church, which didn’t make the character totally developed for me.
There are a number of troubling omissions in this book, as well as descriptions of the African American characters skin color that make me think the author has hardly had any contact with African Americans.
There’s no diversity in the depiction of the African American characters, in thought, deed or even physical make-up. Both Abileen and Minnie are dark and overweight, though Minnie is described as being the shorter of the two.
Also, the scene where Abileen begs Skeeter to go ahead and take the job without regard to the plight of the maids once again took the book into soap opera territory, because Abileen was once again being a martyr. And this was at the height of the civil rights movement, but the book reads as if its an afterthought. But you know, it would be, if an author is basically making up things as they go along. And that’s what the book read like.
Loyal minority …check
humorous minority…check
sympathetic white character…check
villain…check
One more thing, no two more. The naked man came out of left field. Why Minnie would chose to go OUTSIDE and confront him had me wondering why. Then what happens afterward, well I just didn’t enjoy this book like some others did.
The whole reveal about the pie also made no sense in the context of the times. A villain like Hilly would not have let that go. And Minnie wouldn’t have been around to still take about it, had the author not been seeing the South through rose colored glasses. Sigh. I think the book was trying to make a bad period in American history a breezy read. It didn’t work for me.
June 14th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
As a white woman (who was a preteen living in the North during the time “The Help” took place), I would like to speak particularly to those white readers who liked the book. I would ask you to carefully read (or reread), with an open mind, the responses by Kate, Connie Payton, Rachel, Corey, Eileen, and S.
Last night, I was with a group of white women when the subject of “The Help” came up. The other women seemed surprised and perplexed by my negative views about the book. When I mentioned that I had googled “The Help” + “African-American reviews” to see what was being said about the book, one woman, who had read and liked the book, dismissively said “Oh, well, African-Americans hate the book.” Seemingly, it never occurred to her that she might have learned something very valuable by asking why at least some black readers might not like the book.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with her work, I strongly encourage you to read Peggy McIntosh’s paper “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” which you can find online. McIntosh lists several examples of white privilege — Number 32 is: “My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.” To blithely ignore black readers’ perspectives on “The Help” is a troubling reflection of this woman’s unconscious racism.
I’m afraid that the love that so many white readers have for this book reveals so much about their own racial attitudes and worldview. It can be very uncomfortable to examine one’s own assumptions, stereotypical thinking, the nature of white privilege itself. I find myself constantly having to challenge myself, and I have so very far to go. What concerns me is that so many white liberals seem to be so self-congratulatory about their own racial enlightenment (which is why Stockett could reduce Hilly and Elizabeth to caricatures of the other – unenlightened – white Southerners) without looking at themselves and their own views a little more deeply.
For those of you who found the Aibileen – Mae Mobley relationship to be so moving, I would like you to ask yourselves, with all honesty, whether you would have been equally moved if Stockett had chosen instead to write a novel about the relationship between Aibileen and her own son Treelore. Why is it that the emotional connection between Aibileen and the young white girl she cares for resonates so deeply for you? Is it possible that the relationship Stockett created between Aibileen and Mae Mobley is an attempt to assuage the horrors of the racial oppression that exists to this day in the U.S.
So much has been written here and on other sites about Stockett’s use of dialect. I would like to add just this comment. No American actually speaks standard English as it is written – whether we are black or white, Southern or Northern. By way of example, as a white Northerner, I don’t say: “I am going to read the book tomorrow.” I say: “I’m gonna read….” If an author decides to attempt to replicate the actual speech of a particular character (or group of characters), then she needs to do the same for every single character in the book. Stockett’s failure to reflect the speech patterns that her white characters would have had (and that would be true even if the characters were Northern whites) reflects an unconscious assumption that her own speech patterns are the norm against which all others are measured.
In my view, “The Help” is just one more example of “the magic negro” genre that is so prevalent in both film and popular fiction. Here, I’m quoting from http://www.doubletongued.org: “’magic negro’ n. a real or fictional Black person who, especially in deference to white people, is perceived as non-threatening and servile, and appears to have a special ability to help white people.” While Stockett may have thought she was telling three women’s stories, in actuality, Aibileen (wise) and Minny (sassy) are the stereotyped spiritual guides for Skeeter’s moral development. S’s comments on the noble, loyal minority are particularly insightful on this point. If Stockett truly wanted to give voice to Aibileen and Minny (and I’m not suggesting that a talented white writer who did real research couldn’t have created authentic characters instead of the stereotyped Aibileen and Minny), there was no need to even create the character of Skeeter. Skeeter’s role in the novel is patronizing in and of itself – and I find it troubling that presumably Stockett herself and so many of her readers are unaware of how and why Skeeter’s role is patronizing.
As Eileen commented, this book is unworthy of the adulation it has received. For those readers who think that critics of “The Help” are overreacting to a mere piece of fiction, I urge them to think about these issues more deeply. As Eileen so beautifully expressed, “Heroes died, brave people suffered during the civil rights movement. Let’s not give credibility to a novel that trivializes and even patronizes those days of great change at great cost.”
June 15th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Just having finished listening to Geraldine Brook’s Civil War era book, March, which resonated deeply with me in terms of the depth and nuance of its richly drawn plot and characters, both black and white, I listened to part of The Help on audio, but it irritated me so much that I couldn’t finish it.
I am white, grew up in the deep south during just this period and was a preteen and teen in the 60′s.
So much of the book did not ring true for me. People and events were too stereotypical, thinly drawn and cliched.
A couple of incidents by example: The maid’s confusion and dismay when the elderly black man, hired to work outside, comes to the door to ask to use the bathroom. The book states that she had never? been confronted with such a situation before and felt really bad that she could not admit him to the house.
I can’t imagine that this was unusual no matter where one lived, and it’s hard to imagine that such a situation would have even arrisen. I’ve lived in CA now for 30 yrs. and people who are hired to work outside such as gardeners, construction workers, roofers, etc. just don’t expect to be admitted to the house to use the bathroom.
A second example that comes to mind was how limited the typical white women were drawn. Despite many of them coming from wealthy families who graduated from college and had probably experienced the benefits of such a life including some travel, their thinking processes didn’t seem to portray any of this level of sophistication and instead they seemed to think more like the stereotype of poor white trash trying to be upwardly mobile. To me they were drawn more like sterotypical women of the 50′s, not the 60′s, even the early 60′s.
I quit listening somewhere around the part where the wealthy mother was badgering her daughter who had just finished college to apply to the bank for a teller’s position in order to meet a man. If I remember correctly, this girl had a trust fund. Not many people had trust funds then.
Real mothers in that era (any era), and especially on in such a social position would have been much more sophisticated and used her social connections to secure social invitations and job situations where her daughter would be meeting “the right” sort of young men, not pushing her daughter to fend for herself in applying for a teller’s position where she might meet just any type of man.
After March I really wanted to continue about the complexity of our history of black whte interactions. This just didn’t match up for me.
June 20th, 2010 at 8:17 am
I was glad to read the many comments posted. Glad because I have so many of the feelings stated, the comments about the quality, the lack of researching, the way it will be used probably to make people “think” they know what is important, how maids/white women acted.
I especially liked when several reviewers mentioned well written important pieces of literature that did what the author of The Help did, try to depict SOMETHING of importance -yet these few authors (Faulkner for example) did the writing, the character development so much richer.
I want to add another important book, a significant author not included: Zora Neale Hurston. Her book, Their Eyes are Watching God, is exquisite and if you want dialect, wow, and this book should be read by anyone who wants an understanding. Read up on Hurston and you will find an exrtremely interesting background of this author from the period of the Harlem Renaissance, educated, an anthropologist.
My son read this excellent book in college and told me that he thought I would like it, appreciate the main character’s depiction and developkment, Janie, and was he ever right. This book on audio tape should be compared to The Help. Of course , different time period, but an important read.
June 20th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Unfortunately, there have been many things missed about the book from some reviewers.
Most, if not all the African American main characters have been given negative attributes that border on stereotypes (for the record, I don’t believe it was intentional)
For example:
Abileen- absentee husband, thus she becomes a single parent and remarks negatively about him
Minnie – Abusive husband, five children, loudmouth, inability to keep a job
Yule Mae – This character is college educated, yet inexplicably, she steals from Hilly!
Lulabelle – the crime of being “uppity” though she could pass for white
How was this missed?
It also goes along with the lack of southern dialect by the white characters, even Celia, who’s described as being a “redn***” by the author in a 2009 UK interview.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5844739/The-maids-tale-Kathryn-Stockett-examines-slavery-and-racism-in-Americas-Deep-South.html
If this book is being assigned to students, its important that these things not be dismissed as readily as they apparently are.
There are many widely beloved “classics” that, upon closer inspection and a changing of the times are revealed for their insensitivity. Over time, this book might well join that list.
While I do think the author had good intentions, many parts of the book are troubling.
I can understand how Aibileen and Minnie, represent to some, the best characters of the book But imho they fall into caracatures. Minnie provides the comedy, even at the expense of losing her means of employment. Aibileen could be
June 21st, 2010 at 10:30 am
I guess people should only be writing autobiographies from now on. This is a work of fiction. Each of lives in his or her own small world and this book is about Skeeter’s small world. I really enjoyed this book. It was about segregation, but it was also about the other discrimination that occurs in our individual small worlds (i.e., tall women, junior league membership, college attended, silver pattern, rural upbringing, family tree, etc.) and the “mean women” who have the power to make or break us all.
June 21st, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I also want to add that if you take out the ugly violence that went with segregation in the south, I don’t think that the stories of the the “help” in the Northeast, the Southwest, England or anywhere else would be that much different than the stories of the help depicted in this book. Domestic helpers are rarely treated as equals regardless of their race. I’m a lawyer now, but I also cleaned houses in another life. I liked the “poor white trash” woman who Minnie worked for and who didn’t see the “lines.” She didn’t see the lines because in many ways she had started on the same side of the line as Minnie.
June 21st, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Carolyn,
Respectfully,
This is fiction based on FACT. You can’t take out the “ugly” violence, because it still affects the descendants until this very day, and the violence was a part of daily life. You never knew when or even how you displeased someone, whether in the north or in the south during those times. How many here are aware of the rape, whether by force or coersion by white employers during segregation?
True, it also happened to poor white women, but during segregation, some white males believed they could have any woman of color they preferred, even if she was married.
And you only need to go into the supermarket to still see reminders of that time, like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben still smiling on products they could have no shareholder stake in (they, meaning the models for the brands)
One of the problems with the book is that it would have readers believe lynchings and murder didn’t occur, that the only thing Minnie faced after her special pie was a good tongue lashing. I agree with the other posters who think the book softened over how terrible segregation really was, and thats perhaps how you can state “Domestic helpers are rarely treated as equals regardless of their race.”
It was much more than that. Families were separated, with black workers fleeing to the north, in many cases for a better job but also to preserve their very lives. Have you not heard of 14 year old Emmit Till? A lad who had half his face beaten off because he whistled at a white woman?
What about the Freedom Riders? They were murdered in 1964, two white and one black, and four innocent little girls who died in a Birmingham church in 1963. So I don’t understand how you could possibly equate Celia’s story with Minnie’s.
In light of the times, Celia was still a white woman.
She didn’t have a separate bathroom, or water fountain.
Had the author been truthful about the time period, Minnie surely would have been killed for her big mouth and her special pie transgression.
But this is what happens when a author decides she wants to inject “humor” into a situation that does not call for it (as per a UK interview the author did.
http://www.bookrabbit.com/blog/interview-with-kathryn-stockett-and-win-a-copy-of-the-help/
How many jovial Holocaust books are there? Segregation, like slavery was hell, and there’s no way for The Help to put a happy little spin on it.
Sorry, I don’t mean to rant, and Carolyn, I truly apologize since it appears as though this is all directed at you. But its not.
No one deserved to be treated like those who experienced segregation. No one deserved to go through the Holocaust. Man’s inhumanity to man is just senseless,
and yet we don’t seem to know how not to repeat those same mistakes. Carolyn, may god bless. And I’m done here.
June 21st, 2010 at 4:19 pm
I just finished reading this book. I grew up in a small Minnesota town at a time and place where everyone was white. We observed the Civil Rights Movement instead of it participating in it. I was looking forward to reading a novel, instead of a history book, about the times of the early 60′s Civil Rights time and also of the deep south. Where I grew up, no one had help. At the most, someone might have had someone mow their lawn.
The value of this book for me was that it was a good starting point of opening my eyes and causing me to think more about this subject – to learn more, to listen more. It obviously isn’t the definitive work on the subject, but brought me to at least evaluate my own understandings and view points.
June 21st, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I respect Onyx’s comments and I agree completely that segregation was horrible as was the holocaust. However, I also think that a book of fiction, or non-fiction for that matter, should be able to deal with a topic on a very small scale and from a very narrow point of view like Skeeter’s point of view. Most people have “small” lives and their world views are small. As Sue said, this book was not intended to be the dfinitive work on the topic of segregation in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, but I thought it was worth reading and I think that the author had every right to write it, including the black voices. The readers all have a right to dislike it too. I hope that a black maid (or daughter of a black maid) writes the same story from the maid’s point of view and that it includes a white employer voice so we can hear what she thought the white voice should sounds like.
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:43 am
Hi Carolyn,
Thank you for your response. I apologize again for how my post reads like an emotional rant directed at you.
It’s really frustration at the system known as segregation.
Because in truth, neither you or I took part in that shameful time in America’s history. I have the stories handed down to me from relatives and my mom, who at one time was The Help, but I also have my father, who enlisted in the Navy hoping to defend his country, only to be made a cook.
But I agree with you. This is Skeeter’s story and also her journey. The novel is called The Help, but to me, Skeeter represents the hope of seeing beyond color and judging by character, which is what she did by befriending Aibileen and Minnie, and rejecting Hilly. I just wanted (and needed) to come back on here and state that, as I do truly feel its good to have an open conversation. Perhaps, like Sue and others have mentioned, it is a starting point.
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I have to agree with Corey. It’s too bad this book wasn’t written by a black woman. The only reason I read it was because one of my best friends, who happens to be black, raved so about it. Both she and her daughter seemed to think it was great and they read it in a couple of days. I found the beginning chapters engaging, but on into the book I had a hard time with the dialect and wondered if it was accurate. Also, I believe the author had some of the time periods mixed up and didn’t include major events and people involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Skeeter was obviously an atheist and I can see that she wouldn’t have a problem taking God’s name in vain, but I had a hard time believing that a black, Christian woman, heavily involved in her church, would do the same. Skeeter came across as cold, so why would the maids trust her to safeguard their identities? Also, it was unrealistic that Skeeter had no problem whatsoever getting her book published so quickly by a big New York publisher. Towards the end of the book, I struggled to read it. The bit about the naked man in the backyard was ridiculous. I can’t believe The Help is being made into a movie. For more interesting, true to life stories, I’d recommend the book Having Our Say, which is about the DeLaney sisters. Also, Carole Boston Weatherford’s children’s picture books give accurate discriptions of the time period Stockett wrote about as well as the Civil War period (the book Moses). Sorry, but I can’t remember some of the other titles. One is based on the sit-in at the Woolworth counter in Greensboro, NC and shows what things were like through the eyes of a young black girl. I was raised on an isolated southern farm and grew up ignorant of what was going on with the blacks. I hardly ever saw a black person. So, when I wrote a book that was set in the Civil War period and included a few black and mulatto characters, I had a black friend edit it. I wanted to make sure that the dialect was accurate and that what I wrote was not hurtful or offensive to blacks. I wonder if Stockett did the same.
June 25th, 2010 at 2:27 am
I wonder how many people also read “Telling Memories Among Southern Women”? It is a source book, cited by Stockett, of actual interviews with black and white women who lived and worked through this era and earlier. From what I can tell, Stockett’s fictional portrayals — black and white — are quite good.
Also, when it comes to dialect, there is no one “Afro American dialect” and there were many more in mid-century US than there are today. This was a time when the homogenization of American speech was still in process and people from different areas spoke very differently. I remember my grandmother lamenting the speech of relatives who lived just a couple hundred mile away in a different state.
June 27th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
I can’t claim to be impartial about this novel.
However, in an attempt to better communicate, I’ve tried listing the contrary viewpoints and (what I hope) are clearer answers. I’ve also created a site
http://www.acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com (still under construction) where this information has been taken from:
“I was a child when all this occurred, but I do believe I had a bond with my family’s Help.”
It was the system of segregation at fault, and those who sought to re-enforce it. Experiences of genuine affection between domestics and employers are just as valid as real life tales of oppression and terror under segregation. But it should also be acknowledged that African Americans had no choice regarding their behavior. A smile and a humble demeanor were the keys to employment or a term frequently heard in both the North and South, “being a credit to the Negro race.” It’s also understood that children are generally more accepting of an individual who treats them with kindness, regardless of race, and true bonds can indeed be formed.
“The primarily gripe is about the black dialect, but that’s how African Americans talked back then.”
While it’s true that many southern blacks spoke with a pronounced southern drawl, so did white southerners. It’s clear that there was a decision to strip the white characters of their regional dialect, resulting in accentuating the differences between the two groups vernacular and making the African American dialect more pronounced. The sentences uttered by the white characters read as though they inhabited the north instead of the South.
The author fails to take into account that many African Americans worked just as hard to limit their southern accent as some whites did, realizing early on that the way they spoke was crucial to how far they could go, especially in attempting to get more whites to join the fight for Civil Rights. In addition, education was stressed in not only white households but also black. This was a time period where more blacks were enrolled in traditionally black colleges and also attempting to integrate white grammar schools and universities.
“The author was writing about a small section of her life. She couldn’t include everything.”
Stockett has a degree in creative writing and seems to have applied this when crafting the white characters. Notice how Hilly, Skeeter and even Elizabeth have different paths. Skeeter graduated from college and seeks a job as a writer. Hilly dropped out of college and got married, and was the socialite. Elizabeth had two children and became the harried homemaker. Even Celia was “different”, the outsider from Sugar Ditch who married the man Hilly was apparently in love with.
Compare these characters with Aibileen, Minny and also Constantine. All were maids. Except for attending church and going to work they don’t do anything more. Even under the oppressive system of segregation, African Americans still had lives. The author created three women who were almost the same person. In several early interviews the author admits that they were patterned after one woman, her grandparent’s maid Demetrie (Time magazine, NPR, UK interviews). So one black woman served as the voice and character prototype for not only three maids, but other black maids mentioned in the book. In later interviews the writer has expanded this to include an actress as the inspiration for the character of Minny. However, even when race is factored out, women are still individuals with separate needs, wants and ambitions.
“The author was courageous for writing this book.”
To some it may seem that writing a book in both a white and black voice is courageous. Yet African American writers of that time are still being ignored, when they actually lived through the system of segregation. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Richard Wright to name but a few give a more concise and diverse look at the black experience during that shameful period in American History.
What Stockett risked by writing the The Help pales in comparison to those who actually went through it.
Much like Harriet Beecher Stowe received accolades for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Help, on closer inspection, has much in common with that novel. Only time will tell if those who’ve embraced the book and proclaimed it a classic will continue to do so once more scrutiny is placed on the novel, and in particular its characters.
“I don’t know much about segregation, since I’m not from the south. At least this book is a starting point.”
Segregation wasn’t just African American history. It’s American History. Domestics provided cheap labor, practically ran households, worked from dusk to dawn while depending on segregated buses for transportation, and to this day are still not being given their due. Passage of the Civil Rights Law was a triumph, because it benefited not only African Americans but women and the physically challenged, marginalized groups that are considered minorities. The passage of the Law was a combined effort on the part of both blacks and whites.
Segregation was a time period no less important than slavery or the Holocaust, and yet many Americans seem to know little about it. Blacks were forced to maintain a jovial demeanor in order to secure employment and sometimes to preserve their very lives. Coded language (speaking in a way that the whites couldn’t understand but blacks could) has been preserved until this very day.
Particularly in the south, if an African American spoke too proper they were considered “uppity” and a threat. A mask of humble servility and a grin were sometimes the only weapons blacks had in order to get along with whites during segregation, and sadly, some still lost their lives because of the color of their skin.
June 28th, 2010 at 11:32 am
I hope that reading all the comments won’t ruin my enjoyment of ‘The Help’.
As an outsider (while Onyx’s father joined the US Navy and became a black cook, I joined the British Army and became a black officer)Inever had to suffer the indignities which were inflicted on so-called inferiors by bigoted Southerners. Incidentally, I seem to recall that others, such as Jews, also suffered – although, maybe, not quite so much if your perspective was not Jewish! Having a black father and a white mother would not have enhanced my chances of writing this comment had we tried to live in the segregation states!
My point, however, is that the book would not have had so much impact had it been written by a black writer. Black Africans don’t need to be told, by a black writer, what they already know and White Americans would find it difficult to accept that this was actuaally the way it was.
It was the same with the Holocaust – nobody REALLY believed what was happening until non-Jewish American and British troops entered the death camps.
If I like this read, it will not be because of its veracity or because of perfect character delineation, it will be because the author has written (I hope) an interesting story.
July 17th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
I had a very loving caretaker (basically just for me). Her name was Dora (a/k/a) Dodo – isn’t that typical of the times. She raised and spoiled me from my birth in 1947 in Savannah, Ga. until I was 4 years old when we moved to Florida and Dodo wasn’t comin’ with us. Oh, dear I had to contend with my white mother (who – may she rest in peace – I loved too, but not right then). I can hear Dodo saying, go on Baby Girl go ahead and write about me too, she was so great. She was very much like Abileen. I think Al Roker would make a perfect Abileen. Sorry, Al. But, I mean that in such a great way, she was so easy going to take care of me, cook for family and plus I had 2 older sisters (one 5 and one 10 yrs old) that she had to look after. Also, what about the girl who played Precious (she could be Minnie). I have talked about this with my sisters, we don’t remember any bathroom restrictions at all. My parents were really nice people. Dodo also stayed over to babysit. I loved the part in the book about My Favorite Martian. I just about cracked up!!!!
Anyway, you sound like you’ve got an award winning movie, too!!!
Lots of luck
Baby Girl
July 20th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
This book enlightened me as to what my grandmother may have went through during those times before and after the Civil Rights Movement. Initially, I was appalled at the author for writing OUR story. But, as I continued to PUSH through the maze of this story, I began to feel the pain and and struggle my foremothers went through.
This story may NOT eptitomize OUR true story but it gets whites and blacks to think about our past and the effects African American women continue to face in the 21st century.
Thank you, Kathryn.
July 25th, 2010 at 12:53 am
Black women are the glue that kept the South in essentially one piece. They are powerfully loving and pragmatic. White Southern women from that era, with few exceptions, were pathetically weak, soulless creatures who were essentially hopeless bystanders in the drama of racial tension and inhumanity that was the South. The Southern male didn’t need them for much. Window dressing mainly. To those boys, Black females were the sexually charged, harbingers of the end of their pathetic world. The plantation houses had foundations of sand, mixed with the blood of the humans they oppressed. Their slave owners knew it and they knew the center would not hold. If it were not for Black nannies infusing understanding and strength into the white children of the South, where would the impetus for change had come?
The power of that irony is so entirely missing in this fairy tale of a book, it defies description.
A cultural group that can’t raise its own children will fail. Does not bode well for the current crops of financial orphans with Mommy and Daddy both in business suits. More irony.
Anyone who sees this tripe as snapshot of Southern life in the 60s remains part of the problem. It is a cheap trick, a tawdry attempt to allow Southern white women some credibility.
Black women managed to keep the animistic horrors that white men are capable of at bay and thereby allowed reason and fairness to percolate through. They are the true heros of the American struggle for racial inclusion.
July 25th, 2010 at 2:06 am
I was Mae Mobley. I was her same age and place in life, sitting in my booster seat at the kitchen table in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, eating delicious strawberry cake. I can smell it fresh from the oven now! I read *The Help* through her eyes – I was innocent to reality, loved by the help, and held at distance when grown-ups were visiting the house.
I grew up to be Miss Skeeter — not the prettiest girl but the intelligent one who liked to write, the last of my friends to be married, with Mother always inquiring of every boy I mentioned, “Maybe he’s The One?” My silver pattern was Chantilly, and I had eight place-settings by the time I was eighteen.
If you didn’t live it then, you can’t see the realism of this lovely novel. Stockett nailed the dialect, the characters, the sweltering heat, the circumstances, the geography, the facts, the attitudes. If you didn’t live it, you can’t reflect through the subtleties of phrasing and actions and story line. And if you didn’t live it, you may find it unreal, unfair, racist, stereotypical, and off-putting.
The only script that gave me eye-roll was that no white woman could or would have driven alone into the “colored section” every night for months, unseen and unquestioned by both blacks and whites. Someone would have noticed and called her Daddy early on, and the story would have stopped there. That part was entirely fictionalized to suit the story. The rest was dead on!
Like Mae Mobley, I was too young to understand most of what was happening around me in 1962. As a sixth grader, I politely attended my newly integrated public school in the fall of 1970, wide-eyed with imposed fear that never materialized into anything more than a few playground scuffles. As I was drawn into the greater normalcy of desegregation, the adults around me were still living in their world of pre-integration. The laws were changing, but the people were not. I saw it, I felt it, I heard it, I questioned it — just never aloud.
I left Mississippi in the early 1980s. I visit less and less often now, as my remaining family has moved away or died. I do still cherish some sweet memories and carry a deeply set fondness for great Southern-style cooking that I still believe only black women can stir up. I can’t go back. I’ve moved on. Some of the memories are too painful. For you see, Mae Mobley was confused, wanting to ask “why?” — but knowing the answer would always be “Because that’s the way it is, Sweet Baby.” And that took years and distance to understand.
I asked my own Mother recently, as she reflects on being a young white upper-middle class wife/mother in Mississippi during the turbulent 1960s: “Do you feel differently now? Do you see now how it was all so wrong?” Only at age fifty do I finally feel safe asking a grown-up such challenging questions.
Her answer is this: “Oh, my goodness, yes. It was very wrong. But back then, I was so innocent. I had no idea that anything was wrong about what we said, or did, or how we treated people. Why, all of us in the family were raised by our maid Julie. She was like a mama to me, and we all attended her funeral at the black church across town when she died in, what was it, 1982? But blacks were blacks, and whites were whites. We were different. We were separate. It was how I was raised, and it never crossed my mind back then to question, or to think any different way. It was just the way it was. Sometimes now it seems so far in the past…”
Mother didn’t flinch when my daughter told her recently that she has an African-American boyfriend. It’s just the way it is now.
I praise God that I questioned, and that many Mae Mobleys and Miss Skeeters questioned. And acted. And things changed. And we move on, it seems.
As the only one with Mississippi roots among my White-Educated-Professional Big-City Book Club friends, all eyes will turn towards me to ask, “Was this story authentic? Was it really like that?” And I will reply, “Yes, emphatically YES. More so than any of you can imagine.” And I will tell them about how little Mae Mobley remembers the wonderful fried chicken, and the creamy caramel cakes, and the cold deviled eggs with chicken salad sandwiches, and the crispy pork chops, and the Co-Colas in cold bottles from the refrigerator.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:33 am
Corey, if that’s the case – white women shouldn’t speak for black women, why are you, a man, speaking for women?
To other critics: have you forgotten the time period this is set? I’m pretty sure we as black people were kept out of schools, so how many of them are going to sound like they’ve been educated at Tulane? They’re working as maids, well into their 70s, obviously there weren’t many choices.
July 25th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Brandi,I am a woman and also the experiences of white women and black women are very,very different. So we are not some united sisterhood. I speak for my own.
Like I said,she had no right to speak about the lives of women she knew nothing about. Most of these comments reflect comfortable white women who think The Help has opened up a new world. One of the commentators even used the word colored in her comment. Some are talking about how much they loved their help. Bulls**t. They didn;t love their help and they know it. These women were background and nothing more.
Every trope about black people is present. The Stoic Negro,The Happy Mammy,The Sassy black woman. She wrote these tropes because that is how she sees black women. Those who are wetting themselves over this “epic” book agree with her. This book is another example of whites stealing from a culture that isn’t their own and making money off of it. This book was published because whites seem to have an insatiable appetite to see blacks portrayed as tropes and subservient. Every time a book with these themes comes out,it’s a hit. Whites flock to buy it and blacks fume as we see OUR history told by someone who knows jackall about it.
You don’t see people who write about the Holocaust telling stories of happy Jews and kind Germans. No,they write the brutal truth. People wouldn’t even dream of not doing that. But slavery and segregation get NO respect. These women wore a mask to be around people they most likely absolutely hated. It was a mask of survival. As I said,my Gran hated her employer and til this day,she doesn’t like whites. Why can’t a book from that POV come out and be a hit? The Help and books like it want to put a gloss on a hateful period of history because if whites were truly forced to read a REAL account of the time period,it would be too uncomfortable for them. Black writers like Hurston and McFadden who wrote the truth don’t get nearly the acclaim that this silly book has.
The Help is an example of cultural stealing told by a writer who has no idea what she’s talking about. It is being read by blacks with no sense and whites who want to believe that one of the worst time periods for Blacks was also one where we lovingly bonded with these white kids who grew up to hate us. It’s being read by whites who don’t want to face the fact that members of their race behaved like absolute animals towards other people. The Help is a tale written by a woman who wants to relive her time with her dear mammy.
July 25th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Thank you, Corey!
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Well said Corey!
And may I add, Kathryn Stockett skillfully changed WHO the real villains of segregation were. Far too many white males terrorized and assaulted (even murdered) innocent African Americans. Yet Stockett has the males behaving like liberals and speaking like Yankees, and writes it as if white females, sitting around playing bridge were the cause of segregation. Yet history shows no white woman ever kidnapped, shot or lynched an African American during segregation. It was the men, those who believed in the separation of the races and KKK idealogy. Yet even politicians and every day workers helped the wheels of segregation turn, even if they weren’t out there attacking civil rights marchers.
A few other things:
How can the dialect be authentic and “real” when the author refuses to acknowledge her own Southern accent as per her interview with Katie Couric. I quote:
“My grandmother spoke so properly, my stepmother speaks so properly, almost all of my friend’s parents spoke this beautiful, just southern eloquence, and I…honestly, I just wrote it like I remembered it.”
“…but I have to say I think the African American language is lovely as well.”
So per the author, African Americans now speak another language. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
In another interview Stockett claims she remembered the African American cadences, etc. while growing up, yet she grew up in the 70s and 80s. That’s probably why Minny almost sounds like a Nell Carter from Gimmee A Break.
I could go on and on. That’s one of the reasons I decided to create a site listing the problems with the book:
http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/
Listen, the real heroes of civil rights (both white and black), the men, women and children who put their lives on the line have never gotten half the accolades Stockett is getting for her revisionist history. I’ve got an article where one reviewer calls her a “hero” and how “bold” she is for taking on the voice of a black woman.
How bold is it to have characters mangling words and having them say “Cadillac” arrest for “cardiac” arrest. That’s straight out of Amos and Andy, where Kingfish mis-used similar words. And speaking of black, Stockett overdoes it with the “black as asphalt” “black as night” “so black I couldn’t tell them apart” and even having Aibileen compare her color to a roach. A. ROACH.
“He black. Blacker than me.” Aibileen and the cockroach (pg 189)
So this is supposed to be a “homage” to the woman who took care of her? Did Stocektt not realize some African American women would read this stuff and take offense?
None of the white characters compare themselves to any insect, yet Stockett thinks black women do?
But the greatest travesty is when Stockett has Minny say this about black males “Plenty a black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump. but it’s just not something the colored woman do. We got the kids to think about.” (Pg 311)
Was that supposed to endear her to black women with this statement in “blackface”? And what’s her stats on this in 1962, because from what I know and saw, most black men in the south were marching to have white southerners call them men and not “boy”. These same men, like Medgar Evers had fought in World War II and Korea, only to come home and be treated less than humane.
Another thing, for Minny to smack her own child (Sugar) for laughing at Celia, while she does it herself on a constant basis, then give a lame speech about Celia putting food on table made no sense.
Here’s a woman who knows her own children witness her abuse and all she does is holler at her kids (especially Kindra)
and inflicts violence of her own on another? that’s just wrong.
Minny also takes up a knife to defend Celia, who’s locked safely inside a house in one of the worst plot twists I’ve read in a novel. If Minny running out of breath was supposed to be funny, then I wasn’t laughing. And I doubt if moviegoers will either. Yet that’s what it reads like. Slapstick, which I believe later on was suppose to show Minny and Celia bonding over the incident.
It was pointless and came out of nowhere and went nowhere, much like the naked perv did by just walking back into the woods.
No, the book doesn’t have to be perfect. And some of the scenes Aibileen has with Mae Mobley read well. Except,
if Aibileen can offer positive affirmations to Mae Mobley, then why wouldn’t the author believe Aibileen should do the same with Minny, and Minny’s children who witness their mother’s abuse?
Perhaps it’s all about Aibileen having compassion and tears for the white characters. She’s the “saint” who cries over Skeeter walking down the street with her hair blowing behind her or some nonsense. Aibileen cries buckets over Skeeter. Yet Skeeter never tells the maids how she valued their help in creating the novel, or how she realizes how much danger they put themselves in for her. No. Stockett has it where the black church gives Skeeter a present and absolution, which is another myth writers like to include in novels on the racial concilliatory kick.
This is much too long, that’s why I created a website. Needless to say, I’m not a fan of this book. I really hope Stockett’s next novel is nothing like this one.
August 2nd, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Everyone focuses on portrayal of the black women. Of course that’s the subject of the book. But what do you make of the white women? Was Hilly your mother? Or Elizabeth? Or Skeeter?
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Jedel,
That’s a great point.
My response won’t be what you’re seeking, but I’m sure others will chime in with an answer to your question.
First let me say while the book is titled The Help, because the African American characters were not fully developed enough for my tastes, I didn’t think the book was about them. I got more out of reading about the white characters. While Hilly is an over the top villain, she is a loving mother in the book with her daughter Heather. All the women employers appear to have loyal men at their sides. Elizabeth was clueless, but her husband Raleigh clearly cared about his children. While Hilly was made to be the face of evil in the book, I think she was the fall guy/girl. Each of the families benefited from segregation, and yet only Hilly appears to be a mouthpiece and a staunch supporter of the system. It’s as if the rest of her friends (Skeeter included) would treat black people just fine if Hilly wasn’t around.
I have to post this statement a commentor named Karen left on my blog:
“To me it feels as though Skeeter never really comes to an understanding of what she’s doing. Is she fighting to dismantle a form of white supremacy or is she building up her professional portfolio with an edgy little project that has to stay secret?
Does she even understand what racism is? It’s not just Hilly being mean and ignorant. I want her to come to the awareness that racism is what built her home, kept her fed, and paid her way through college… that racism is what allows her to be the nice white lady who writes a book and gets a few pats on the back from the less powerful people who depend on her.
I want the veil to role back enough for her to see herself as something less than a hero.
And yes, I want her to have to make some tough decisions and face some real consequences. I don’t see how she has either the strength of character or the bonds of love that would enable her to stand strong against racism in the face of terror.”
August 5th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
As an English reader I found the discussion of dialect incomprehensible as all American voices sound unusual to me.(Absolutely no insult intended) and tended to obscure the core facts. For me the strength of this novel is not that it is great literature but that it brings to a wider audience things which would otherwise slip unrecorded into the past. Many, if not most, people outside the USA who read this will not be well versed in the detail of the horrible facts about segregation. I had to google “The Jim Crow Laws” . In truth I was staggered by what I found. This novel, repeat novel, is education by stealth at it’s best precisely because it is a compelling read.I suggest few readers would have the inclination to read a drier historical account. Men and women have always written about what they have not experienced first hand, ( science fiction for example) so critiscm on this score is largely invalid.
August 7th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
This book is a piece of literary GARBAGE! As a black estate manager that works in the heart of Buckhead Atlanta, the book was given to me by a white male as a gift. I read the cover and back and immediately threw it in the garbage.
being born and raised in Atlanta Georgia, I see Buckead Betties all day long, and their sole purpose in 2010 is to make the black and hispanic womans life pure misery just because they can, and take it from me Kathyrn Stockett is no different. She says she feels bad because of how her maid was treated, well, other than write a book, why not finacially give to the immediate family of that maid, that spent her whole life cleaning up after you, your parents and siblings. Save the sorry and thankyous for those who
need it!
These white women would rather be hit by a train than to pay a black woman a high salary so that she can get ahead financially.
Bottom line the book is for the wealthy white woman that has maids, because it is filled with negative stereotypes of black women- that they whole heartedly STILL BELIEVE….including the racist author Kathyrn
August 9th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Thought provoking.
I live in the South, always have. I wasn’t born until 1980, so I missed the ability to give a first hand account, but even if I would’ve been born a few decades earlier, my family was too poor to have help.
I do know that the novel kept my interest and at times made me feel ashamed I was white, even if my ancestors never degraded a black person. It does make me wonder, would they have been the same if there had been a cotton plantation involved?
Yes, some can argue that there was never a woman implicated in the murder of a black person during the Civil Rights movement. That men were the ones performing disgusting acts against a race of people because of the color of their skin.
However, there were other issues that black people had to deal with.
Maybe the issues highlighted in this book were not as atrocious as some that were going on in the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, but that doesn’t mean that they were not legitimate. The size and grandeur doesn’t make racism problems irrelevent.
The assassination of Medger Evers and MLK Jr. were enormous acts of betrayal, but the mistreatment of Rosa Parks is no less relevant because of them.
I cannot pretend to know what the South was like in the 60′s. I do know that this book made me think about it. Which, if I’m honest, I’ve never done before.
August 11th, 2010 at 4:17 am
Love it or hate it, The Help has prompted a critical debate about segregation, racism, and stereotypes, all issues which continue to fester in our society. Many of the thoughtful postings on this site, both pro and con, have helped me to reconsider the story’s significance beyond passing entertainment (or abhorrence, as the case may be.) The suggestions to read the writings of African-American authors are well-taken. It is difficult to view a story outside the frame of our own prejudicial lens, so listening to a spectrum of opinions can help clarify our vision. All of us have some kind of bias, no matter how enlightened we wish ourselves to be. My own perspective has been influenced by an insulated childhood in Southern California and a life spent on the West coast, so I cannot speak to the authenticity of this novel’s setting and character depictions. The character of Skeeter, however, rings true to me because even as she is growing in awareness of her culture’s contradictions and ugliness, she is immersed in it and formed by that culture. Skeeter’s motivation to write the book is not purely selfless, which makes her very human. Although the experience of hearing the maids’ stories broadens Skeeter’s awareness, she is still a young woman focused on her own goals.
Healing the wounds of social injustice in America and worldwide requires a concerted effort by individuals and not just their governments. Each one of us must actively seek peace and justice. We need to listen to one another, try to understand the other’s perspective, and extend ourselves beyond our personal concerns. If perhaps Kathryn Stockett has created an imperfect depiction of black maids and their employers in the segregated South, she has touched on the universal themes of intolerance, injustice, and the redeeming insight that ultimately we are all very much alike.
August 13th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
I had not checked to see what the author looked like, just dove in reading that first time (April 2010). I say, Kathryn Stockett is an author telling a story; it’s fiction. She’s not “speaking for” anyone. She has a story to tell and a message to send; doesn’t matter who or what she is as long as she’s a writer who can get us to feel something about the characters and the plot. She does that. Men wrote “She’s Come Undone” and “Geisha” from women’s points of view and did a great job.
So Stockett didn’t go into all of the civil rights events and the history; that’s OK with me because that wasn’t really what the story was about. It was about the lives of these women and the point that they really had feelings and thoughts that they had to keep hidden in order to survive and then the change in the maids and their readiness to speak up and tell their stories.
I enjoyed the book and the characters and give it a “9″ our of 10.
August 16th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
I absolutely loved this book! But I wanted more of an ending…I wanted to know more about what happened to Skeeter after she left and Aibileen’s new job and Minny’s new life after Leroy. And law…that Hilly had to be dealt with better in the end!! I just wanted her silenced!!
August 17th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
I loved this novel, it is the best book I have read this year, can’t wait for Kathryn’s next novel.
August 19th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I agree with Carol R. Would a non- Jewish person ever presume to write about the Jewish experience ? I think not.
August 22nd, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Corey and Onyx, I 100% agree with your post. This book is pure garbage written by a privelaged white woman that knows absolutely nothing about how it feels to be a black woman, yet alone a black maid. She is also delusional if she really beleives that a black woman really loved her. My grandmothers had to take care of white families, but on the flip side of things, if they could have poisoned them and got away with it- they would have. Black women back then did what they had to do for survival, but at the dinner tables, they talked about how much they despised the very people they served, including their children!
Even in 2010, these lazy white women have not changed, but the black women that choose this profession have. Trust me we are not our grandmothers, so they choose to use and exploit hispanics now. I have played many a mind games with these people in their homes to get what I want, even if it means pretending to really care about them. I think as a black estate manager I will write a book about the real white women in Buckhead. The ones that are so disfunctional, cant manage their homes, their children, their husbands, but can shop, workout, and meet at lunch and discuss this garbage of a book- The Help.
Kathyrn if you dont beleive anything else in your life, beleive this- those black women that served you, did not love you, no more than you really loved them. You were a JOB to them and nothing more. Maybe your conscience is bothering you because deep down inside you know that those women never truly got the life they deserved because they were too busy taking care the likes of you and your family, but neednt you worry because new age Domestics like myself are getting what they coulnt and thats High wages, descent work hours, and all the professional benefits that comes along with a job, not old food, old clothes and hand me downs….. Come again with this tired old retoric of a book!!
August 22nd, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Nadia,
Here’s a few other things you may not know. The book was printed with two covers, one for American readers and one for European readers. The publisher decided the photo of two actual black maids may have been too controversial for American readers. You can view the UK cover here: acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com
Also, interviews with the author are troubling. Many of her statements sort of explain why the book reads as it does. I don’t think the author realized the way Demetrie, her grandparents maid was treated perhaps influenced how she (the author) looked at African Americans. Here’s an excerpt, and other interviews by the author are worth reading and listening to:
“Grandmother would say, ‘Leave her alone now, let her eat, this is her time,’ and I would stand in the doorway itching to get back with her. Grandmother wanted Demetrie to rest so she could finish her work, not to mention white people didn’t sit at the table while a colored person was eating.”
Quote from kathrynstockett.com
Now, Stockett was born in 1969. So this mindset of not sitting at the same table while an African American was dining occurred when she was a young girl, during the 70′s and 80′s since Demetrie died when then Stockett was 16.
And, if your blood pressure can stand it, check this out:
“…I’m so lucky that Octavia has agreed to go on the book tour with me. So on the book tour event, she’s actually going to be reading the parts of Aibileen and Minny and also take on a few of the white women’s voices which will be very funny to listen to. And I will read the white roles and hopefully it will be a lot of fun.”
Quote from covertocover.podbean.com/2009/04/26/kathryn-stockett-the-help
After reading this I realize the author doesn’t get it, probably never will and segregation was just a “fun” plot device to sell books, which worked. Americans never want to think of themselves as “the villain” no matter if the actual history of segregation can contradict it. Thus the section in the novel where Skeeter is given “absolution” of sorts from Aibileen’s church. Yet the author never has Skeeter stating she now feels the treatment of African Americans was unfair or that she believes blacks and whites are equal. I think what’s left out of the book is just as telling as what was written.
(Active links to these quotes can be found here: acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/a-list-of-interviews-with-kathryn-stockett
August 28th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I read many of the comments and agree with different perspectives! I bought the book for a book club, somewhat reluctantly. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta in the 60′s.
I expected to be disdainful of someone trying to attempt the subject who is from such a similar background to my own. The dialogue made me cring and Skeeter’s attitudes seem anachronistic in places. Despite some arguments with the writer, I could not put it down and it made me think about that time and how it waslike the title of Ellen Gilchrist’s(another white, southern, priviledged novelist) book of short stories, “In the land of dreamy dreams”.
August 28th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Two corrections: cringe
and to clarify my last sentence, I would say that the white girls were growing up in a land where being polite and pretty, etc,etc, did not at all match the kind of grossly impolite and ugly world the others were living in. It seemed so soft, in ways, but there were many people who were playing hardball. Of course, there are many books by smart people who could explain this so much better than I.
August 29th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Does anyone have any idea why the UK edition has a different cover? Apparently the photo on the UK cover was considered unacceptable for an American audience yet the UK edition was, I imagine, published after the US edition. Have a look on Amazon.uk to see the UK cover.
August 29th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Oops, just seen Mary has also raised the question of the cover.
Incidentally, I do wonder if what Skeeter would have done with her life if she had been more conventionally attractive. I’m not sure the story of black southern maids would have been told.
August 29th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Nadia,
I was reading your comments and then realized- YUCK- you HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK. Do you really think you’re an expert on something you haven’t read?
What a disappointment. I thought this was a great conversation among readers until I realized this.
Please, as a literary journalist, don’t engage in literary discussion unless you’ve read the material. I don’t think KS got it all right, nor do I think she got it all wrong. But I would never comment unless I’d read THE BOOK.
August 30th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
I am halfway through The Help and I love it. I am white, and live in the UK. I lived in Texas for a year, and visited Louisiana last year and heard a man in a gas station refer to black men as “n*****s” and was astounded. In Texas I experienced segregation and views that were truly shocking. We have plenty of racism here in the UK, but the openness of it in the south was astounding.
I think it’s a tough call writing a book in a black voice in you’re white. It made me uncomfortable – and as Connie commented above, to some people it will sound inauthentic, and offensive. However, I have learned a lot from it – and been reminded of some things I already knew, which can only be a good thing, for me personally. It makes me think about oppression, and pay attention to my own behaviour. I worked as help for a rich family in Connecticut who treated me like I was an idiot, and had no respect for me. I was free to leave, and did. It was awful, and I had nightmares for years afterwards about that experience. Yet doesn’t come close to what was faced by blacks coming out of slavery into humiliating, “paid” work, but I appreciate why people might get jumpy about white people writing about this subject.
Politically though, I can’t help wonder about how palatable it would be for white people if it were a black authour? It’s a hundred times easier to be published if you’re white – and how many people read black authours? If this book is seen as a summer, beach read as has been suggested, that’s shameful – this is talking about a serious subject that has nowhere near yet come to being resolved. It’s extremely well written, as an engaging story, but politically – it’s adding the much needed debate. On balance, I think it’s important that it was written.
August 31st, 2010 at 10:23 pm
I finished “The Help” and shared the book with my daughter. We Loved, Loved, Loved it!!!
I was raised and still live in Oregon and attended school with many black children. I never was exposed to the rediculous prejudice of the South but am aware of it happening. This read was a way for many of us “Northerners” to understand what it was like to be black in a time when many were condescendingly “used.” Shame on the whites of those days and today if they still feel that way. Shame on the critics that are simply missing the point! When’s the next book coming out? I’d love to see a continuation of these characters!
August 31st, 2010 at 10:33 pm
I read Nadia’s comments and find it hard to comprehend her bitterness. Does she really and truly believe all white people and all black or hispanic people are the same? Please! I all fairness to everyone, there probably were many black maids that hated serving whites but I’ll bet you my last dollar they didn’t all feel that way. Nadia sounds like someone who has been taught to hate. Too bad. My women friends have enjoyed this book and have kept in mind, it is a fiction novel. Well, do tell!
September 2nd, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I don’t think you have to read the book to know the horrors of Segregation. So I understand where Nadia’s anger comes from.
I speak as someone whose parents were “help” and who fled the south for a better life.
But the oral stories that were handed down to me on “how it was” made me do more than cringe. I wondered why the people who put their lives on the line (both white and black) so that I, and others might be treated equally were not getting half the accolades the author of this book is.
They are the real heroes to me, the men, women and children who risked the attacking dogs, water hoses, assaults and even threats of death to march for freedom.
One thing Stockett only touched on was how many black women became the unwilling mistresses of white southern males. I say this because one day I looked in my family album and asked who the white man in a picture was. My mom said it was her grandfather. He had pale eyes and could have passed for white, except his mother was black. And then my mom explained how many white males picked the woman they wanted, with no care whether they were married or not, and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it.
So yes, I said “horrors” and not the idyllic fantasy world that Stockett created. The Help is fiction the author stated she based on fact. However. The author, which was well within her right, chose to focus on what she believed as a white woman, the “affection” between blacks and whites.
And that’s where, if I had the ability to debate Stockett, I’d challenge her (and frankly anyone else for that matter). Segregation was no picnic. It was the systematic de-humanization of a people simply because of the color of their skin.
So everyone so in love with this novel, please remember one thing. African Americans smiled because they had too. Because making a white person laugh was better than having them mad at you. And the grinning, cowering, and even ranking of a people based on their color (the poem was “if you’re black, get back, if you’re brown, stick around, if you’re yellow, you’re mellow, if you’re white, you’re just right- now, I may not have the poem exactly right, but that was the rhyme as I remember it) was wrong.
There was nothing humorous, loving or affectionate about it. Even after the Civil Rights Act was passed, that didn’t mean African Americans were treated equally. We can see that even now that there are cases (like the one recently uncovered in Mississippi, where black children were only allowed to run for certain class officer positions every other year, and the class presidency was limited to only white students. I’ll find the link and post it)
So yes, I understand Nadia’s anger. I may not be as angry because what my relatives never had until much later in life, I enjoyed from birth. But it didn’t stop me from doing research and wanting to know more about the time period. I wanted the truth, and that’s why I started my website challenging the book.
You see, even after what African Americans went through, they were expected to move on, though I suspect many, like my parents experienced post traumatic stress. But they were expected to deal with it. And now, because so many people are in love with Stockett’s version of segregation, those who express anger or want to delve into the true insidious nature of segregation, well their comments are unwelcome because some only want to dwell on the positive. I get it.
But I agree with Corey. If this book was about the Holocaust or even Apartheid, then a book focusing on the “affection” between a Nazi sympathizer and Jewish Prisoners or those who believed in Apartheid and those who toiled under the oppressive system would hardly warrant this lovefest. There’s the truth and what people want to believe. Those who want to believe that African Americans were just fine and dandy under Segregation, and had no problem being domestics need only look at the photos of the civil rights marches. Take a look at the children who stood with their parents, children who were arrested and to this day have an arrest record (though some were offered a pardon, they refused, saying their taking a stand was a badge of honor)
No. The truth about Segregation has been “whitewashed” far too often, because no one wants to be painted as a villain. But during this time period, there were far too many who used Christianity to assert the races should be separate and unequal. All you have to do is look at Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben grinning at you for a reminder of just how African Americans were supposed to behave during the time period.
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Here’s the link to that article on the school in Mississippi holding elections that limited positions based on race:
Miss. school reverses race-based rules for student elections
Under former policy, some class positions rotated by race each year
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38880820/ns/us_news-life/
Excerpt:
“The memo said that only white students could be president of the school’s eighth grade, while only black students could be vice president.
In seventh grade, whites were the only ones who could be both president and vice president, while the only position a black student at Nettleton could run for in sixth grade was that of the class reporter.”
Now, if this is still happening in 2010, imagine how many dreams were crushed among promising African American students during the heyday segregation.
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Andrea, you asked about the differing covers. Here’s what the author has to say, per an Interview with Parul Kapur Hinzen for Books & More
Excerpt:
“Americans are not comfortable talking about race. The U.K. was able to put a much more racially cognizant cover on because they’re not so sensitive about the subject, as I understand it. And they’re also talking about someone else. You know what I mean? We’re very self-conscious about the subject. If we were talking about the racism of, say, India, then maybe we could have put something relevant on the cover. They picked a cover [for the U.S. edition] that had absolutely nothing to do with the book. And I think they did it on purpose.”
http://www.artscriticatl.com/2010/05/author-appearance-kathryn-stockett
The practice of differing covers is nothing new. I have more info here: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/a-tale-of-two-covers/
September 4th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Jan Taylor, I am not bitter nor do i have to had read the book to know that it is the same tired old retoric that you white folk just love to hear. As a young black woman that went around with her black mother to clean homes, I remember how white women actually thought they were doing something great for me and my siblings by giving my mother old freezer burned food, old clothes, old broken toys and pure junk to take home. I remember my mother pretending to be grateful, and when we left their homes, and got to the nearest trash dumpster- my mother would dump everthing in that dumpster and we would laugh as we went back home to our beautiful home filled with nice furnishings. My mother owned a classic Firebird and a Cadillac, yet would drive a ragedy old beat up station wagon to work. Why do you think she had to do that? She did it because white women would have fired her if they thought that she – a black woman might actually be living better than them, and she was the maid that they were helping to live a better life. So you white people can continue to find this book amusing but I find it pure garbage and a way for you again to elevate yourselves even from the truth. No black woman servant or male servant in that time LOVED these white people. My heart goes out to Demetrie, because she truly worked her life away for whites and probably had nothing to show for all her hard work other than caloused hands, feet, and knees.
Now, on the flip side, as an Estate Manager working in Buckhead, the home of the author, I know for a fact that the author is the typical well to do privaledged white woman with money. I make six figures and am about as loyal as my next big gig. Im just telling like it is from a black domestics point of view, and our story is very different, so much so that the white women try to use Hispanics but get frustrated with the language barriers, so they ultimately end up hiring people like myself- and we dont come cheap. So maybe thats why Stockett is feeling so sentimental about her maid because she knows those days are long gone with black folk, but obvioiusly still perpetuated by the likes of you all that find this book to be the gospel. Get real! Onynx- thankyou for all the info, I will look it up!!!
September 5th, 2010 at 9:46 am
To Pepper and the Jan Taylors of America. First, I dont have to be a literary guru to know trash when I smell it! The book is trash, and I find it interesting that in the age of Obama that this book is so popular amoung white women. Let me share a true story with you. Several years ago, I landed a job working with an old very wealthy widow. One day she told me how such a loyal hard worker I was, and began to tell me about a domestic black couple that worked for her entire family until the wife died of cancer, which then the black man continued to work for her family without ever taking a day off except to attend his wifes funeral. She said that this man was the sole cook, chaffuer, housekeeper, laundress, and houseman for her family for over 40 years. I asked her did he get bonuses and benefits, and she replied, ” No, but my parents always gave him good food and stuff”. She went on to say that one day he came to her and asked her for 2,000.00 to pay off a tax debt and she said NO. Then she said the look in his eyes showed that he was truly hurt by her response and she said he left and she never heard from this man again. He wouldnt return any of her calls, then one day while reading the obituraries- there he was. She started to cry as she said, “Nadia, I have never forgotten this hurt I feel by not helping the man that helped me and my family for all those years. I have carried this guilt around with me all this time” I comforted her, but at the same time told her the truth- not what she wanted to hear. I said, ” You should have given that man his roses while he was alive, this is all black help in those days wanted, financial rewards for years of hard backbreaking work and service, not food and stuff”. She wanted me to pacify her and tell her not to feel the guilt, but for the sake of that man lying in his grave- I a black domestic was not about to do that to help ease her conscience. She was wrong and so was her entire family.
Now, a white male that my mother cleaned for- for about 25 years died of cancer and left my mother 50,000.00 in his will. Surprisingly, the women of his family tried to stop my mom from getting that money, but couldnt. On his death bed at the hospital, I remember him telling my mom, ” Gin, you have been like a sister to me, caring for me when my own blood wouldnt, and I truly love you for it. I have never called you my maid- but my friend, and I have left you and your family something just to say thankyou for making my life so much easier.” He died the next day, but he gave my mom her roses while she was ALIVE when it matters, not when shes DEAD and gone with some garbage of a book that degrades and denagrates black women in that time including Demetrie herself. The sad part about it is that white women in 2010 still want to feel superior to black women, like you are our saviours just to elevate yourselves from the truth and that is black women then were your teachers, which proved that as much broken english these women had, they obviously had more heart, character, and basic common sense than the women and children they served.For Stockett to make fun of the pain is absolutely beyond me and for you all to like it is even more pathetic, but then again not so surprising.
September 5th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
The original review is a bit curmudgeonly. A novelist should not be limited to writing his or her gender, color and/or experiences, no matter how fresh the wounding in the world of reality. These posts reflect more about the person posting than the book itself, as both Blacks and Whites say the book is authentic or inauthentic, depending on the individual’s pov and life experience.
I will merely add that while Stockett has written a powerful debut, it’s a bit much to say she’s brave for having written it. There are no repercussions in this day and age for writing about this topic. If only one of the maids were Islamic…
September 5th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Diane,
I agree with your statement:
“A novelist should not be limited to writing his or her gender, color and/or experiences, no matter how fresh the wounding in the world of reality.”
But imho fiction isn’t a genre an author can hide behind when they decide not to do any substantive research on a racial group different than their own, especially if their book’s central theme is about race relations. Much of the criticism regarding The Help touches on this.
Your statement “There are no repercussions in this day and age for writing about this topic. If only one of the maids were Islamic…”
That’s a very interesting point. I do know Stockett was asked directly about the criticisms of the novel from African American readers, as early as in 2009, by both Michelle Norris of NPR and Katie Couric. And Stockett has admitted being approached by a few readers who weren’t pleased with the book.
If one of the maids were Islamic, I doubt if Stockett would have been able to get away not doing research on the culture. And that also applies if the maid was Hispanic or Asian, or any other culture possibly.
I wonder how many readers would be as charitable with their praise if a writer did the same thing as Stockett with their culture?
How many readers would give a book on 9/11 praise if it depicted, say all the Americans in a less than desireable light but many claimed it had?
One would hope that an author taking on the voice of another culture at least respected that culture enough to think there was some beauty in it. Why does the African American culture not merit the same type of research and respect other cultures receive when speaking of the beauty of the people, their customs or their style of speech? Why must some cultures, not just the African American culture, but mostly those who are of a darker hue tend to be depicted broadly as less than?
Some writers either leave out diverse characters when writing, or throw in a minority as a sidekick. I’d hoped after hearing about all the hype for The Help, that this wasn’t the case with this novel. Sadly, after reading the book AND researching what the author had to say about her writing process, imho segregation and black domestics were just a means to an end. This book is really about Skeeter, a white character and her travails, as she comes to “know” more about the domestics working for her and her friends. Aibileen, Minny and Constantine are poorly written sidekicks. The Jar Jar Binks of modern women’s fiction.
September 5th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
To Nadia:
You’re welcome. Just so you know, I couldn’t get my daughter to go past the first page after she read Aibileen’s intro :)