- 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 :)
September 6th, 2010 at 9:59 am
I liked the FICTION book. Born in ’51, I was completely unaware of what was going on in 1962. I was totally embarrassed about the horrible things that happened in the book and the attitudes that prevailed. I am sorry if it offends anyone of the African-American culture.
I am of Irish heritage – I read “Angela’s Ashes” – and I was horrified by that behavior, but I know it existed in SOME households.
Fiction is fiction, but I am thankful for this glimpse into the world of the South of the ’60′s.
September 7th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Onynx, I went through everything on your site, and I agree 100% with everything that was written! I truly feel that it is no coincidence that America has its first Black President, and suddenly Whites have an epiphany about the cruel treatment of black women and men in the South, as if the North didnt get their hands dirty and capitalize off of black men and women back in those days. The cotton fields in the North were big factories. The very people that think this is an interesting read, are the very people in my opinion, that are the ones that hate the fact that a black family is in the white house. They need a glimmer of hope that they may be still ABOVE blacks, so they want to continue to patronize this old retoric of black folk taking care of white folk just so they can feel on top. This book is nothing new, and if you ask me it could be borderline plageristic of the author, like Corey said a stealing of black culture by a white person who ultimately capitalizes and gets praise when she doesnt deserve it.
Onyx, I threw the book in the trash after reading the front and back pages because no white person is ever going to convince me that back in those days, THEY LOVED their help. They made these black men and women work like mules from sun up to sun down with no respect to the fact that they too had families. God must truly have been carrying these brave women and men through the rough sands of racism, because they truly suffered. My grandmothers suffered! Even the children left intentional messes for these women to clean up after, as a child I witnessed this behavior of so called christian caring whites that so called just loved their black help. Every interview I have read with the author just proves to me that she is a silly white woman and a racist as well. The white male that gave me the book as a gift probably thought that he was paying homage to me and other black domestics in the South like me, but if he really wanted to honor me, he would have not purchased a book that mocks the black men and women of that very painful era. The minute he opened it and saw the broken english and negative stereotypes- he should have left it where it was- on the shelf. But this is the fundamental difference between blacks and whites, or shall I say IGNORANT WHITES, because sensitive smart whites who know better find this book pure JUNK!
September 7th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Hi Nadia,
Thanks for visiting my site. Might I also suggest my ongoing Amazon.com discussion thread, where a very diverse group of people discuss the book, and we have a lively conversation (very civil, but we bring up historical facts and some of our most outspoken regulars are from the midwest)
Here’s the link: http://alturl.com/tgd8c
Just click newest post to get to the most current posts. Right now we’re discussing the names. I didn’t know there was an actual town called Pascagoula. I enjoy learning facts like that, and also I think you and another poster named Julia would hit it off great :)
September 10th, 2010 at 10:12 am
In the hands of a competent writer, this book could have been compelling, as the story itself and the historical realities are interesting. As it is, the characters are mere flat stereotypes, and the stereotypical “vernacular” voice the writer uses all the black female characters gets annoying quickly. EVERYONE from Mississippi has a southern accent, not just black maids!
September 14th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I was born in 1964 in the midwest..My Mother was the help in for a white family for many, many years beginning in 1972..I remember the stories she use to tell when she came home..How the lady of the house couldn’t cook and left everything they did the weekend for my Mother to take care of on Monday..But the one thing that i remember most was how their little girl who was my age, loved my Mother. That family gave my Mom many gifts where actually a raise was what she wanted..I know THEY felt they took good care of her..As far as the dialect..I cannot write about..But the stories, I thought were dead on!!!
September 17th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
I am like the previous writer who lamented going to Book Club and being the only person who didn’t like the book. I grew up in Columbia, SC during the 50′s and 60′s. I am very familiar with the times.
At my book club, each month we rate the books that we read. This book received the highest rating of any book. Even beating out To Kill a Mockingbird. To me, that is the saddest part of this book. It does a very poor job of depicting the insidious nature of segregation and people are loving it and believing it.
I tried to explain to my book club that there were two parallel worlds going on. African-Americans were doctors, lawyers, nurses and teachers, but were not allowed to be a part of the “white” world. I think that fact contributed to the ills by allowing segregation to last as long as it did. Without brave people from the North coming in and pushing the issue, we’d probably still have segregation in the South.
To me, Driving Miss Daisy did a better job of showing that not even the good people of the South did anything to help the Civil Rights movement. And Dr. Martin Luther King said this over and over. What we will look back on is that the good people stood idly by.
This book caricatured the black women. The black woman who worked for my family was very articulate and bright. She spoke perfect English and had she been born in another time probably would have had a career.
The humor in this book is entertaining. But, as it is being treated as a story of the Civil Rights era, I believe it does more harm than good. And, I believe the author was very lacking in her understanding of the times.
September 18th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
I enjoyed your review, but was this required.. “Does an author, even in the services of fiction, have a right to appropriate these stories?” Really? Are you serious? “a right”? Of course she has the right.
September 20th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
I am astonished at the nay-sayers of this fine book, and agreed with those who questioned the reviewer’s point of view regarding Stockett’s “right” to write this story. What happened to free speech? I thought this was a brilliant and evactive piece of literature that will no doubt find itself adapted to the screen (as it well should be). I listened to it on audio and was terrifically impressed with the skill of the readers. My boyfriend and I have been sharing the book, I was a few CDs ahead of him. Today he told me he finished it and immediately started it over again. Bravo Ms. Stockton! This book deserves to be read by everyone.
September 26th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up to read. I had no idea if the author was black or white. Personally, I didn’t care. I couldn’t put the book down. It was quite the page-turner. I laughed. I cried. I felt fear. I felt anger. Every emotion. I didn’t disect it while I read. I read it for what it was worth – shear entertainment. Can’t wait to discuss it next week at the book club meeting. And I’m glad some of you aren’t in MY book club. Are you perhaps, members of a local Junior League???
September 27th, 2010 at 6:30 am
Having recently joined a local village book club in the South of England it was at my 1st session that I was thrown into the deep end and asked to recommend a novel for the next read. I had been on holiday to America and come across ‘The Help’ having been recommended to me by my mother in law and read it over the course of a couple of days.
Being put on the spot at book club it was the first book that leapt into my mind as being a ‘great read’ which was how I remembered it.
Being an English girl who has grown up in South Devon I have no experience of any Southern American states in the 1960′s apart from the usual ‘To kill a mockingbird’ and ‘Gone with the Wind.’
I did love the book for the simple reason that I felt it taught me something about which I know relatively nothing about.
I don’t feel that it matters if KS is black or white, she is telling a fictional account of these characters lives and does so with what appeared to me a truthful portrayal. Of course I have no real life experiences of my own to compare this to – but then I find this in many novels that I read, indeed I would have to be incredibly well travelled and knowledgeable to find a true life experience in everything that I read!
I believe that KS wrote this book to highlight the injustices of the time and in doing so has helped to open eyes to these issues, eyes that would not have necessarily been opened without this book. In my view if a book can do that then it has done more than just entertain. I am looking forward to discussing this at book club tonight, it is an all female, middle class older group and yes we are all white…. does this make a difference? Hopefully not.
October 6th, 2010 at 12:47 am
Entertaining–Historical it is not. At best, a beach read.
I was born and raised in Mississippi in 1950. By the way, I AM African American and my mother was a maid. Believe it or not, she quit quite a few jobs in the 60s. Black maids, since slavery ended, have quit jobs and found another one down the street. Stockett references to historical occurrences (Medgar Evers assassination and James Meredith entering Ole Miss) appear to be an attempt to give credibility to the novel. Many readers are having issues understanding that this is a work of pure fiction. Because it is based in Mississippi, people will believe the most awful situations between the races–after all, it is Mississippi. I thought the characters were skeletal at best especially the African American characters. It IS an easy read.
Unrealistic: A 23-24 year old “Hilly” would have so much influence in the state capitol that with one word from her, a poor Black maid would never work again. And what was up the light-skinned near- white daughter of Constantine having d to leave Mississippi when she was young because she was too light skinned? Unbelievable to the fourth power. The maids profiled in the book belonged to Medgar Evers’ church, but were terrified to speak–the civil rights movement was organized in the churches. Puzzling at best. I was unconcerned about the dialects of the characters, but was forced to focus on the flaws or lack of character development and predictability of said characters—so one dimensional.
October 16th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Nadia, you seem to be a very bitter and angry woman. In some of your comments it also seems to me that you may also bepretty racist. What was done to the african-americans in the south was a horrible thing and am glad to say I was not a part of that. I grew up in the north and most of the kids in my neighborhood were blacks or peurto ricans, not that we noticed these things, they were just other kids. We did not have help and we were definitely nt rich but we went to integrated schools and got our educations and many of the kids I grew up with have become very important people in their careers and there was not any distinguishing because of race. You may be a high paid cleaning lady but to look at the way you have written your comments, you need to go back to a spelling class.
Onyx,
You make fun of KS because she has made money from this book and has become well known because of it. Aren’t you doing the same thing? You spend too uch time criticizing her book but at the same time have made yourself a website. Where would you be and what would you be doing if KS hadn’t written this beautiful FICTION.
October 16th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Hello Mary,
Thanks for visiting my site. As you could tell, it’s via wordpress and I have no ads on the site. Therefore it’s not up to generate money. I felt so strongly about the book (quite the opposite of your adoration for it) that I decided to research and post what I (and many others)felt went wrong with the novel.
In addition, I believe I owe not only my college degree, but the very right I have to speak out with an opposing view to the real heroes of the civil rights movement, both black and white. Some of these individuals I’ve also listed on the site.
So I hope this answers your question on where I would be, because the site has no affect on my livelihood.
I respect your opinion, and at some point I hope you’ll be able to at least understand, if not agree with why others may not believe the novel is “beautful FICTION.”
For example:
At some point I hope later editions of the book correct the information about Medgar Evers. On page 277 Skeeter mentions he was bludgeoned in his front yard and also Kathryn Stockett repeats in two audio interviews that Evers was bludgeoned to death (links are on my site). Medgar Evers was shot.
The author even has Minny stating this as well as other characters, as there is a section on Evers shooting in the novel. When giving a critical analysis of the book, this point as well as others are necessary, even if the novel is fiction based on fact. There are some actual events you cannot change, even when included in a novel of fiction.
Opposing viewpoints are nothing new these days. And thankfully, both Nadia and myself have been afforded the right and opportunity to do so.
October 18th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Well, I’m not sure such Civil Rights discussion on the book was the purpose of Kathryn Stockett’s writing of it. Rather, perhaps her view of relationships from growing up in the South from the perspective of the characters in the book. When I work and serve others to accomplish a task I do grow to like the people I work with. Children don’t see color or understand culture complexities until they are taught. Thus, love is possible from their perspective. They feel security, love, mistrust or the lack of it. The books purpose, for me, allowed me to visit a time that I didn’t belong. I thought about it, feel bad about it and am glad we continue to learn from it. History repeats its self unless we choose to learn from it. Anger, hurtful remarks and harsh attacks allow feelings of hurt and mistrust to continue. Be kinder to one another. One person at a time can make a difference and change–it can be you.
October 21st, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I read this book, also for my book club, but was unable to attend. Though I enjoyed the book immensely, I was troubled by the idea of a young white women writing a book by imagining how a young white women from 50 years ago would write a book about what life was like for black women of that era. It sounds a little convoluted, doesn’t it? How accurate could that be? I wanted to know what anyone who actually grew up in that time, in that place, with that life would have to say about it. And after reading all these comments, it seems they all have different opinions of how accurate it was!
I wish I could have attended my book club meeting to hear if anyone even thought about this, because that is what is troubling me now. I have the distinct feeling that so many white people (like my book club) will read this book, and not have these questions, but just think, “Oh, isn’t this great, to be able to know what life was like for these poor black maids, and how awful we white people were to them, but thank goodness, some of us treated them better!” Not that we shouldn’t think that, because certainly there must have been some stories that were similar to this book. But what bothers me is that a purely fictional book may be used to argue points about our collective past. It was not written by someone who truly knows what that past was like. She didn’t grow up like her character, Skeeter, did. It was her GRANDPARENTS who had a maid, and yes, she knew that maid, but it was a different time.
It was a kind of risky thing for this author to do. People will criticize her for it and since it seems no one can agree about how accurate it really was, I think we should just regard it as fiction and as entertainment, not the be-all and end-all of telling it like it was. Yes, we should learn from our past and I guess this book can be a reminder to do that, but I think it’s being made out to be more than it is. Kathy said she was Mae Mobley and she seems to think it a pretty accurate portrayal of that time. Nadia and Onyx vehemently disagree. Who’s right? Everyone’s own experience is different and when someone else’s experience doesn’t jive with their own, they say the other’s is false. This cannot be. It’s all about perception. Everyone is arguing about the validity of the book. I understand how Nadia or Onyx (don’t remember which) doesn’t like the fact that white women are reading it and feeling all good about themselves because they are talking about it in their book clubs, etc. I’m white and it bugs me too. I think the most important thing to get out of all of this is to remember MLK’s words, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”. It’s so easy for us white women to feel all noble about reading this book and talking about how awful it all was, because we are standing in our moments of comfort. How many of us would have proved our measure when it really counted, back in those times of challenge and controversy? Not many, to be sure. But as unrealistic as the character of Skeeter might have been, were there not people, whites among them, who contributed to unlocking the chains of civil unjustice for the black man? Were there not those who followed MLK’s words? They (all colors) should be remembered and applauded. As history continues to write itself there will always be those few who prove their measure while the rest of the world looks on and thinks they are crazy. Will we never learn?
Can’t we just treat this book as simply fiction and nothing more? Yea, I know, it’s irritating to those who feel it’s junk, because they know some will treat it like it’s so much more. But as my son has been saying since he was the wise old age of 12, “people are different, Mom”.
October 31st, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Mary, how ignorant and simply typical of you to say. The fact that you were raised in the North around blacks and latinos, gives you no right to call me bitter. The correct word would be angry! Until you have experienced the pain that I felt watching my grandparents go through back doors, work every holiday, not get fair wages for hard back breaking labor….then pass judgement. And yes, I do make over six figures, it is what i command for decades of suffering that my ancestors endured. I personally have known white children that were raised from birth by black nannies that are adults now, and all they do is talk about those women like dogs. I have never heard one of them say that they loved these women, but they are quick to make fun of their broken english, their culture and lifestyle, the foods they eat, the places they live, and so on and so on. Maybe my blatant honesty disturbs you. Maybe its not entertaining to you like the book, but whatever you call me just dont call me bitter because I am no Minstrel wanting to shuck and jive with some of you white folk posting. The book is garbage and it says a lot about you that find it so interesting…..really it does.
November 1st, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Nadia,
I’ve got a post on my site that you may find interesting.
“In the early 1920s, the United Daughters of the Southern Confederacy lobbied congress to pass a bill for the construction of a National Mammy Monument. Having pushed for and been successful in constructing several such memorials throughout the south, the UDSC wanted ground broken in Washington, DC in order to pay tribute to the loyal female domestics of the South.”
http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/the-affection-myth/
In the same post, I examine other wildly popular novels that deal with employers and their African American domestics. Some patterns the books follow:
1. Dialect of the white and black characters differ sharply.
2. The female domestic/character is both a confidant and secondary caretaker.
3. African American males in the original novels are either non-existent, having left the domestic character long ago, or if they are present, they represent males who are ”Shiftless” and “No-Accounts”.
Excerpt fron Edna Ferber’s novel “Showboat”
Queenie: “That shif’less, no-’count Jo knew about cookin’ like you do, Cap’n Andy, Ah’d git to rest mah feet now an’ again, Ah sure would.” (Pg 118)
Jo, the character now known as “Joe” in the stage version sings Old Man River, a song many love but mistakenly believe is an African American spiritual. It’s not.
Excerpt from the once wildly popular novel Imitation of Life:
“You have a husband?”
“Died six months ago in the Atlantic City Hospital of a lung misery that brought us here from Richmon’. A white n*****, miss, that you’d never think would’ve had truck with the likes of me. God rest his soul. It wasn’t ‘til after de Lawd took him dat I learned it was a bigamist’s soul.
Excerpt from the wildly popular novel The Help:
One day I say Crisco. He scratch his head. He just can’t believe I done won the game with something simple as Crisco. Came to be a secret joke with us, meaning something you can’t dress up no matter how you try. We start calling daddy Crisco cause you can’t fancy up a man done run off with his family. Plus he the greasiest no-count you ever known. (Pg 5)
****
You can’t make this stuff up folks. And yes, readers have the right to love it or hate it or not to read it. I don’t expect anyone to agree, but I hope at least some readers will try to understand.
November 2nd, 2010 at 3:54 am
Hi I would be interested in the thoughts of the reviewers of this book to “The Lost German Slave girl” by John Bailey.
I am finding it a compelling insight into to conditions of slavery in New Orleans in the early 1800′s. From the comments I am reading about the “The Help” I think many would be interested in it.
November 10th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
***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? ****
Given Hattie McDaniel’s response about portraying Mammy “I’d rather get paid to play a made then actually be one” – - I’ll go out on a limb and say that Hattie would have loved this book. One, it will be putting black women to work once the movie is being produced and two it is exposing the hardships of the life and times of black people.
I find it odd that people are questioning if this or any other story portraying the lives of black people should be told by a white person. Anyone remember Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (a white lady)? It has been done before and I hope it is repeated many, many times, and vice versa for black women/men to portray a story about white women/men if they should see fit to want to write one. I am definitely not comparing the story of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to “The Help” – just pointing out the fact that other white women have written from a black POV.
I am a bi-racial woman living in Atlanta (Buckhead area) and I LOVED this book! I read it in two days and just couldn’t put it down. I cried like a baby when the church presented the autographed book to Aibileen and then again when Aibileen gave the other autographed book to Skeeter.
Everyone has their right to their opinion. Freedom of Speech is a wonderful thing to have! To me, it borderlines on having racist thoughts/tendencies if a black person thinks it is not okay for a white person to write about black people and/or from a black POV. JUST as it would not be okay if a white person disliked a black person writing about white people or any other race. That would be limiting and people didn’t die for us in this country to limit/control Freedom of Speech.
Being bi-racial. I have seen both sides of the fence. I grew up in a small Caucasian town in Illinois where I was the only one that wasn’t fully Caucasian. I was called every derogatory name for a black person that you can think of. I’ve had crosses burned in front of me (at the time – I didn’t know the meaning behind the burning – I just thought it was mean and dangerous to have an fire on a school bus) and was constantly picked on because I was different.
This may sound cliché, but when I look at people, I do not “see” color. I have always followed Martin Luther King’s line of thinking that people should be judged on the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. Again, I didn’t know any details about MLK until I moved to Atlanta at the age of 18. Slavery was mentioned only vaguely in my history classes (I think only one chapter in 8th grade and one chapter in High school).
Sorry to ramble on, but I just wanted to get across that “The Help” is a good read. It did have some minor flaws as some have previously stated with Skeeter not getting caught in the black neighborhood in her big white Cadillac and/or truck and a couple of other things. But hey, it is fiction and I enjoyed the story for what it was.
November 11th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Oops – I meant to spell “maid” not made!
November 13th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Onynx, I agree with you 200%. This author is NOT BRILLIANT!! A couple of weekends ago, I was watching a movie that seemed similiar to her silly book, The Help., it was called A LONG WALK HOME with Cissy Spacek and Whoppi Goldberg. If you ask me she stole bits and pieces from this movie as well. Bottom line, the story line is old and tired. How many books and movies of this nature do whites have to read for entertainment and enlightenment? All they need to know is their ancestors mistreated, overworked, underpaid, disrespected, and murdered innocent black people. They are connected to SAVAGES that spoke good english, made good money, and disguised the stinch of their hateful cruel selves with fine clothes, fine perfume, and fine homes.Its just that simple!
November 14th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Onyx, I went on your site, and all I can say is WOW!!!!! I am not surprised though. What is interesting to me with most of these posters is the fact that they want to pretend that they did not know that blacks in the South were treated this bad….. Havent they seen pictures of blacks hanging from trees while white so called Christian men, women, and children watched? You mean to tell me that none of them know who Emmitt Till was? PLEASE< PLEASE<PLEASE!!!! It does not matter if it was the North, South, East or West, the fact is that whites of that era got their hands wet in the game of mistreating blacks by using them for cheap labor like mules. All regions of whites participated in segregation. Your site is very informative and revealing! This is real black history, maybe Stockett should have consulted with you to get her facts correct before she plagerized bits and pieces of previous books and movies with a generic version of what is supposed to be truths about relationships between black help and white employers. Kudos to your site!!!!!!
November 15th, 2010 at 12:01 am
I just don’t get the “hate” on this book. If this book brings up discussion on the way blacks were treated in the South (and elsewhere) during the 60′s – - how can it be a bad thing????? And, I totally get people not truly understanding all the negative things that happened to black people back then as full details are not disclosed and/or taught in the public school system. Typically, there are only brief mentions of slavery and Civil Rights taught in the public school system.
I am sure people know about Emmett Till, but they may think that is a one-off situation and not a representatation of the way that blacks were mistreated/abused/killed for just being black as black history is not being taught in the public school system.
I suggest writing your own book of revelations and/or descriptions of how it was back in the 60′s if you think this book was written poorly and/or is not a good representation of the time period. Note: It took this author 50 tries before she was able to publish her book. She didn’t get published just because she is “white”.
My friends of all races and professions (Doctors, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, etc.) think this is a good book. By no means is this the best book I’ve ever read, but it is entertaining and informative and definitely a conversation starter!
November 15th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Autumn,
I can understand why many love this novel. Just by reading the comments on here, their reasons are evident.
I believe the same can be said for those like me, who don’t care for the book. Just read the comments. You don’t have to agree, but the answers you seek are there.
Personally, I enjoyed Hilary Jordan’s “Mudbound” and “Page From a Tennesee Journal” by Francine Thomas Howard much more than The Help. As far as other reasons why the book didn’t appeal to me, well. . .
I can only speak for myself, but leaving aside the racial aspect of the book (since that may be a stumbling block to this discussion), imho Skeeter is a Mary Sue.
Go to college and then decide you want to be a writer/journalist? No problem, just send a letter to a NY editor and she’ll help you out (for no better reason than someone once did it for her…yeah okay, it’s fiction so I’ll bite)
But wait! there’s more. Need a job at a newspaper to boost your resume? Just walk in and Mr. Golden will just happen to have a job you can do.
But Skeeter, AKA “Mary Sue” (the term can be googled for anyone unfamiliar with it) doesn’t know a thing about giving housekeeping tips. What will she do?
No problem, just ask the help, and Aibileen, who’s the loyal, stereotypical domestic will be at your beck and call. And if you need an idea for a book, because at the end of the novel, of course you’ll need it to land your dream job, go take Aibileen’s dead son’s idea (with her blessing of course). Never mind that Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin as well as other African Americans were being published during this timeperiod. Skeeter, who acts as the typist/editor does such a bang up job that she’s gone from no talent writer to best selling author in no time.
And at the end of the novel, does Skeeter hug Aibileen, does Skeeter promise to keep in touch so that the “bond” she’s forged with Aibileen won’t result in a trip home later on only to find Aibileen has also died? Nope.
Blinking back tears and a “thank you” will suffice, while Aibileen will cry tears of joy over imagining Mary Sue I mean Skeeter walking down the street with her hair flowing behind her.
Much like Yule May Crookle (that’s right, the character who steals has a last name of “Crookle”) finds she must confess in a rambling letter to Skeeter, a woman she doesn’t know, somehow, things just happen to fall into place for Skeeter AKA Mary Sue without much happening to her.
Let’s see…what’s next.
A handsome senator’s son to fall for Skeeter even though he’s in love with another woman and she’s described as tall, having frizzy hair, pale with a bumpy nose?
Hilly, the book’s villain (and Skeeter’s best friend) will set you up with him.
He even comes back to beg Skeeter to give him another chance after their blind date ends badly.
And in just a few dates Skeeter will have him buying an engagement ring. Skeeter has some kind of mojo I tell ya.
But what’s not to like? Everybody loves an underdog, while I may not be able to identify with Skeeter, I can still root for her.
There were moments when Skeeter appeared to be in danger. But nothing happens.
I love a good villain, only by the end of the novel, Hilly is all bark and no bite, especially after learning she ate poop and loved it.
And “good” never really comes up against “evil”. Skeeter turned out to be a wimp, never really confronting Hilly, her good friend. Which brings up this burning question “How in the world does Skeeter turn out to be so compassionate, so accepting, so liberal with the likes of Charlotte Phelan for a mama and girlfriends like Hilly and Elizabeth?” :)
November 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
I love “The Help”. After eight years of not reading a novel apart from what i had in Literature class “The Help” was a boost for me.
I really procrastinated when I had to read because I didn’t want such a wonderful book to finish. At 3a.m. this morning I just could not stop reading. I had the phone to give me some light to read.
When I arrived on chapter 33, I could not sit still, my heart ached, i rolled everywhere, it felt real, just to find out what happened to Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt.
November 18th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I can’t wait to see the movie for this book. I love it.
November 19th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I loved this book of FICTION. I was born in 1930. My family never had ‘help’, but I grew up with ‘colored/white’ signs on most everything, from drinking fountains to city buses. In 1951 I married a member of the air force, and moved to Savannah GA, when integration was just beginning on the military installation. Being white, I don’t presume to know how someone black feels/felt, but I’m glad someone at least attempted to write from this viewpoint, and I loved this book!
November 21st, 2010 at 1:06 am
WM, 68, here, a Virginian who has also lived in Georgia and North Carolina. Married into a Georgia/Alabama family in which black housekeepers were the norm in the 1960′s. Started reading this book in print, then switched to the audiobook. The dialects are among those I have heard and in fact occasionally still hear, so I have been surprised by the many negative comments on this issue.
I usually read nonfiction rather than fiction, but I loved this book and rate the audiobook performances as the best I have ever heard.
Although I never personally observed mistreatment of domestic workers — or even discourtesy — in the 1960′s, at minimum I could easily infer, by comparing the conditions in which they lived with the homes in which they worked, that they were poorly compensated for their service. “The Help” has filled in the picture for me, reminding me of the social divide and of the many backbreaking, menial tasks that the workers were required to perform in order for the employers to live pleasant, comfortable and often luxurious lives.
Having had the unforgettable experience of being steered away from a “colored” drinking fountain when I was only three years old, I have had a lifetime to observe the inhumanity of racial discrimination and separation. in the era of “The Help” this injustice was worse than it is today, but the novel suggests how much remains to be achieved.
I might quibble with a character’s occasional use of a phrase not yet current, and with the improbable plot elements others have mentioned, but these points do not diminish the impact of this novel, nor dissuade me from recommending this book highly.
November 24th, 2010 at 1:11 am
Onyx, I haven’t heard of Hilary Jordon or Francine Thomas, but I appreciate the recommendations and will seek to read their books.
Upon completion of “The Help” I devoured “Wench” by Dolen Perkins-valdez, which was an interesting, albeit depressing and heart-wrenchingly true look into slave “mistress” during the time of slavery. The odd thing is that I read both “The Help” and “Wench” during a wedding anniversary trip to Charleston where we toured the Slave Market museum and other slavery historical sites. Needless to say, I wanted to scream “hallelujah” we have a black president – look how far we’ve come from the auction blocks regardless of your political preference!
I am an avid reader and did not find Skeeter as an average Mary Sue in the slightest. She went to college to be a writer was my understanding. And yes, because she was white would have made things easier for her just as if this book were to take place in our time today. Just a fact of life that is changing with more education.
In regards to sending a letter to a NY editor, I know several people who reach for the stars and apply for jobs that they do NOT have the credentials for but yet that make that extra effort just to see what happens and I’ve seen amazing results. The NY Editor didn’t immediately give Skeeter a job, Skeeter had to prove her self- worth by writing such a controversial book in her time that the NY Editor saw her capabilities and wanted to reward them with a job. Skeeter sacrificed her friends, social standing, and pretty much her family status (her mother I am sure would have eventually found out – but this is fiction so who knows) .
IMO, Hilly and the rest of the crew were really not Skeeter’s friends. Maybe they were in High School, but we all know things change in college and to me Skeeter’s friends were more about following the norm (getting married and having babies as the route to success vs. falling in love and doing whatever comes natural). In the book, did Hilly love her husband? I think not, he seemed like a male figure that would do anything for his woman despite the fact that she didn’t love him which is evident when her husband spots Stuart looking at his wife in the restaurant on the first date with Skeeter and the fact Hilly approached her X (sorry, can’t remember name of him) at the social soiree and joked to him that he found his wife at an LSU game as the hot dog vendor or something like that.
In regards to Skeeter’s job at the paper, he offered her the lowliest job possible because of her dedication to her schoolwork and the fact that she did not have a social life. So, one would think he hired her because of her capabilities to succeed at whatever task she was given because her character is driven to succeed.
I love the fact that the editor of the newspaper gave the job to Abileen (at Skeeter’s request) and he knew that she Aibileen was black (although he didn’t want it revealed). That is a step in the right direction vs. turning her down because she was a black maid.
The ending with Skeeter not hugging Abileen or whatever, I felt it realistic. They were both so scared of somebody coming in and finding them out so they kept it casual. I felt from the writing that both wanted to hug and/or show affection toward each other, but they were scared of the consequences of being found out.
Skeeter could have kept all of the profits of the book and not shared a dime and who would know? Would one of the black maids protest? I don’t think so as they wanted their identity kept a secret.
Is this book perfect? Heck no, but it was enjoyable if one is willing to put back their own feelings on racism and incidents that happened to you and/or your family and loved ones.
Was this book meant to represent all black maids in the 1960’s and what they had to face with their employers? Heck, no. Every situation is different and IMO and KS was not trying to represent the plot as such.
In regards to Stuart, he was weak and pretty much a loser. He couldn’t stand up for what he wanted in life due to his father’s political role. I didn’t find it odd that he asked Skeeter to marry him after only a few months of dating because that was the time period. Primarily in social circles, a lot of girls held on to their virginity until marriage thus enticing the male suitor to pop the question so that he could “consummate” the marriage.
**********And “good” never really comes up against “evil”. Skeeter turned out to be a wimp, never really confronting Hilly, her good friend. Which brings up this burning question “How in the world does Skeeter turn out to be so compassionate, so accepting, so liberal with the likes of Charlotte Phelan for a mama and girlfriends like Hilly and Elizabeth?” :)
We all play roles in life. Skeeter appeared to me as an outcast in the “upper echelon of society” and befriended Hilly and Elizabeth because of her social standing only. IMO, Skeeter realized that her friends were basically self-serving only after Hilly and Elizabeth departed college for marriage. Skeeter was the only one out of the three to stay on and obtain her degree.
November 26th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
It really floors me when educated people keep commenting that the author need be of black heritage in order to write a fictional book, partly, from a black woman’s perspective. That is absolutely ridiculous and narrow minded. No one would want to pick up a book of fiction ever again if they all had to be autobiographical. This is just a guess, but I really don’t think that J.K. Rowling was ever a young wizard boy?
November 27th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Hi Autumn,
Thanks for your response.
I’m glad you went into detail, in particular why you feel Skeeter and Aibileen’s last meeting did not result in a hug.
You said:
“I felt it realistic. They were both so scared of somebody coming in and finding them out so they kept it casual. I felt from the writing that both wanted to hug and/or show affection toward each other, but they were scared of the consequences of being found out.”
From page 435: We ain’t seen each other in person in six months. I give her a good hug. (Aibileen)
My issue was that in the book, an overt show of affection is one sided. So I hope you can understand why it’s a sticking point with me, especially since in many novels of this kind it’s done this way (Showboat – Julie gives up her livelihood so Magnolia can have a job, Imitation of Life – Delilah offers to give up her fortune in the pancake business so long as Bea will allow her to stay on and cook, GWTW- Mammy had no life other than taking care of the O’Hara’s and then Scarlett’s family).
In the book Aibileen risks her livelihood and life to gather the maids Skeeter needs and to secretly meet.
So here’s why I think Aibileen and Skeeter’s last meeting
was should not have lacked for closeness on both their parts:
Since Skeeter was so devastated over losing someone close already (Constantine) and based upon all that Aibileen and Skeeter went through, why wouldn’t Skeeter either profess how much she appreciates Aibileen’s help or do something to show she truly does value what Aibileen did for her, and that she’ll miss her?
(sorry, getting her the job at the paper after she was already giving the answers doesn’t seem as enough)
Since Skeeter is never pushed to admit what she truly feels about race relations (after everything she now knows, does she believe segregation is wrong? or that Aibileen, Constantine and Minny are her equal?)
Since the book is set squarely at the height of the civil rights era, I don’t think that’s asking too much. Especially when real life individuals, like nineteen year old Joan Trumpauer Mulholland was standing shoulder to shoulder with black college students and publicly speaking out, protesting and participating in the Jackson Woolworth sit-in.
In their last scene together, Aibileen inwardly says:
I think about the first time Miss Skeeter come to my house, how awkward we was. Now I feel like we family. (Pg 436)
And Aibileen presents Skeeter with a copy of the book signed by all the church members, while Skeeter reads the thank you’s and tears fill her eyes.
Yet after all that, all Aibileen gets is a “Thank you?”
Then the author has Aibileen in bed crying because she’s so happy for Skeeter (I doubt if Skeeter is doing the same thing for Aibileen)
“That night I lay in bed thinking. I am so happy for Miss Skeeter. She starting her whole life over. Tears run down my temples into my ears, thinking about her walking down them big city avenues I seen on tee-vee with her long hair behind her. (Pg 437)
It’s a tried and true tactic some authors use, so that readers can “feel” for the minority or other stock character. But this is 2010. It wasn’t needed imo. Aibileen is so sweetly docile and saintly already throughout the novel, it reads too much as manipulation, and Skeeter’s reactions (or lack of them) stand out to me.
I have a feeling the movie will change this.
I’ll only comment on one more of your replies:
“Is this book perfect? Heck no, but it was enjoyable if one is willing to put back their own feelings on racism and incidents that happened to you and/or your family and loved ones.”
I suspect since the harm done by segregation was not universal, tales like this will always be enjoyable, especially since the author admitted she wanted to inject humor into the novel.
Segregation went on for over a century. Even after the Civil Rights Act was passed, the author revealed that her grandmother still didn’t allow her to sit at the same table with the maid the book is partly based on (account is in the back of the book and on Stockett’s website) and this was during the 70s and 80s. There are also individuals still alive who went through it first hand, just like there are survivors from other atrocities.
I’m still waiting on that “enjoyable” best seller written from the perspective of someone taking on the voice of both a Nazi sympathizer and a Jewish concentration camp prisoner, or about 9/11, or Apartheid, or perhaps Japanese in US internment camps, even one on current prisoners of war, yeah, maybe it’s time to redo Hogan’s Heroes. I then wonder how many readers will even be approached about setting aside their feelings, or be able to.
Anyway, please know that I’m really glad to have had this discussion, and I do understand why the book has resonated with many readers. I’m glad we got a chance to discuss our differences though.
Thanks again for your reply.
November 27th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Sorry, that last part should read “the author revealed that her grandmother still didn’t allow her to sit at the same DINNER table with the maid the book is partly based on (account is in the back of the book and on Stockett’s website) and this was during the 70s and 80s.”
*****
Hi Elizabeth,
I’ve never thought of myself as a fantasy creature, but a real life woman with dreams, goals and accompishments that I could achieve on my own, if I worked hard enough for them.
Maybe that’s what Stockett missed in the novel. Because to me, there’s no character development.
Oh heck, since I started this post I might as well list why Stockett missed the boat writing while “black” (but listen, I’ve got no problem with her reaching out and broadening her horizons. I just don’t think she quite captured that we behave just like other women).
For example:
Aibileen can give teach Mae Mobley daily, positive affirmations but can’t offer comfort to her best friend’s children who are also witnessing and in all probability being abused. If you can love your employer’s children, you can certainly care for your best friend’s.
Minny, a woman who’s been abused for over fifteen years is so stuck in the “Bossy” maid stereotype that all known data flies out the window, because she’s supposed to provide laughs.
Until Skeeter comes along, neither Minny or Aibileen act as if they have any dreams or goals, as if only by Skeeter’s intervention do they awake from inactivity and realize there’s a civil rights movement rising in the city where they reside.
Minny’s uncalled for remarks about Shirley Boon, a woman trying to organize a sit in. No, the author has Minny’s reasoning for dismissing getting involved and acting as if the maids stories are of equal or greater importance than the civil rights struggle. But it’s okay, because Minny’s the one who doesn’t think before she speaks.
Minny never tells her children she loves them. Not once in book, while Hilly as the villain does. But there are scenes where Minny talks about wanting to get away from them. And this abused woman smacks her own child when Sugar (her daughter) gossips about Celia, something she (Minny) has been doing throughout the novel.
Aibileen can cry a river over Skeeter, who’s alive and well, yet the reader gets no scenes of grief regarding her own son. It’s not like Treelore (gotta love that name. Actually, I hate it. That and many others meant to show how “colorful” black names are I suppose)
OT:
The Medgar Evers getting bludgeoned line by Skeeter. It would be if I said Bobby Kennedy had died of a bludgeoning instead of being shot.
What worked for me:
Mae Mobley and Aibileen, though I could have done with all the manipulation of “You is kind, you is smart…” and the potty scene meant to show even a two year old realizes segregation is wrong via a toilet. Aibileen’s exaggerated dialect narration, especially the word “Law” and the over insertion of the word ‘be’, as in ‘she be’, ‘he be’, etc.
I enjoyed the relationship between Louvenia and her employer Lou Anne, and what Lou Anne did for Robert, Louvenia’s grandson. These two characters were the best thing about the novel for me.
Minny and Celia, but only with the naked pervert scene cut, and Minny’s speech less crude. She just wasn’t funny. It was a bad stereotype of a stereotype.
I’m surprised she wasn’t wearing a bandana and carrying a tea service while saying “Mo tea suh?”
Cut the character of Leroy all together. It’s obvious he was based on Clyde/Plunk, the husband of Demetrie (Stockett’s grandparent’s maid) who physically abused her.
Okay, that’s it for now:) Anyway, nice chatting with you.
January 14th, 2011 at 9:23 pm
Congodog sounds filled with hate. But I will say(to her comment that white people can’t raise their own families)…it doesn’t seem as if black single moms( with no fathers for their children) are doing as good a job raising their families as black families did in the previous decades.At least back then,many of the families had 2 parents. OF course, the same can be said of single white women today as well.
January 15th, 2011 at 6:23 am
I was so sorry to finish this book because I just loved it. I hope to see a movie version & I also think the ending lends itself to a sequel. I will wait patiently for Kathryn to provide one!
February 14th, 2011 at 2:24 am
I read this for a book club, found it very odd, having been born white in the north in 1950. Appreciate Nadia’s viewpoint VERY much. Can’t imagine all the black women under somebody’s thumb were so happy about it, also the complete absence of any sex harassment rings false. Stockett grew up with an elderly maid and grandparents, maybe that’s why the world she creates sounds as if it’s the 1930′s instead of the 1960′s.
I agree with complaints about dialect. When I hear southerners with a heavy accent, I can’t guess if they are black or white! Which amuses me greatly.
Finally, one of my few sojourns in the south was the airport in Birmingham. I was struck by how watchful and reserved blacks were toward whites. I have a black friend who moved from Alabama to California where he became a person I’m quite sure he could never be in Alabama. He is a playwright, a firefighter, drives a porsche and has long braided hair.
This book disappointed me, it only touched the surface and told no hard truths. The emotions of that time must have been far more powerful, given that Mississippi was a powderkeg!
February 16th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
This book is not very understanding of, or sympathetic to,
“white trash.” I guess it’s okay to mock poor white people, to caricature them and make them the laughingstock of the society, or certainly, to provide comic relief in the book.
To call this book a beach read is to compliment it.
February 16th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
There are digitized copies of the newspaper Stockett used for her “research” on the novel that are free to view for all. The paper is the Clarion-Ledger, which has been revealed as a pro-segregation paper (as evident by many of the articles bent on furthering oppression)
Link:http://civilrights.historybeat.com/gn_civilrights_newspapers.php
Far too many politicians, businessmen and citizens of Jackson, as well as others around the country belonged to the Citizen’s Council, formerly called the White Citizens Council. I wish to stress that not all residents of Jackson were members. And yes, it was a different time period. But the “affection” between blacks and whites is sorely lacking from the letters to the editor by average citizens and articles.
It’s also is a testiment of how things have indeed changed. This trip back in time will be an eye opener for those interested.
The Citizen’s Council isn’t in The Help, though there’s no way Hilly, Senator “Stoolie” Whitworth, Real Estate owner Johnny Foote, Skeeter’s father Carlton among others wouldn’t have either been members or known those who were.
The glaring omission of the CC from the novel is yet another reimagining of a time period that was neither “quaint” or “humorous” for those forced to endure it.
February 19th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
thanks, Onyx, for your thoughtful posts. I’ve enjoyed reading them and look forward to perusing your website.
I am an immigrant to the US. The book was recommended to me by a friend of diverse heritage ( Sri Lankan and Colombian). Neither of us have first hand knowledge of the times or setting of this book. However, I reached the conclusion long ago that I couldn’t understand my adopted country without understanding the dynamics of slavery and its aftermath. I’ve studied the civil rights movement, and am well versed in the major events, key figures, and tensions within the movement. what I don’t know about is how life was away from the headlines, how it translated into the minutes of everyday lives. So on one hand it was interesting to read an attempt to provide an account of that. With respect to the comparisons to Jews, I think one critical difference is the degree to which the races lived together in the south – Jews didn’t keep house for Germans in the 30s, and didn’t provide care for their children. So to read a (fictional)account of how that might play out day by day, the interactions between women from different worlds but at close quarters, is intriguing.And I think there’s a universality to some of the situations; some of the choices Aibileen and Minny make are choices socio-economically underprivileged women still face, particularly when they have children to support; we all wish we could challenge injustice but when faced with it we often make the choices that keep our children safe. Few of us are willing to endanger them for the greater good. And the book was a page-turner – i read it at one sitting. Having said that, fundamentally it did not ring true for me – again, I have no family stories to measure it against – but i found the plot lines predictable and a little trite. I don’t believe in Skeeter’s transformation, and her relationship with Aibileen seems forced. Still, I applaud the attempt to provide a window into a world that has shaped our country. I don’t think the picture it provided was quite accurate, but it got me thinking about a time and place that is critical to our understanding of the US, and therefore on balance I’m glad I read the book.
what I really want to read are the firsthand accounts of women who lived through this time – I hope someone is collecting their stories and archiving them before it’s too late. I would love to read them, and think they would be ultimately more satisfying than a work of fiction.
February 19th, 2011 at 11:40 pm
I have just finished listening to this book on tape. Can someone explain to me what happened to Patricia? Did I miss it? Was it not disclosed in the book?
February 21st, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Hi Jade,
Thanks for your comment. You’re probably aware by now that Kathryn Stockett is being sued by a real life maid who works for the author’s brother and sister in law. The woman’s name is Ablene Cooper. More on the lawsuit can be found here:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/family-maid-files-suit-against-author-of-the-help/
Not only is the article interesting, but the readers comments are quite insightful.
I’d like to recommend one more site. A blogger by the name of Macon D asked this question and a number commentors responded:
“Here’s something that I as a white person can never really know — what’s it like for non-white children when they have to sit through an education system that still normalizes and glorifies white people and white ways, more or less all of the time? A system that also still denigrates the contributions and lived experiences of people of color, more or less all of the time?”
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2010/07/force-non-white-students-to-read-great.html
******
Hello P. Archer,
On page 353 of the novel, Stuart reveals to Skeeter that he drove all the way to San Francisco to see Patricia in order to get her “out of his head”. They had it out, and when he came back to Jackson he to let Skeeter know that his feelings for Patricia were dead and gone.
February 24th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Here’s the movie I want to see: a movie with all the people here on this site talking to each other–black, white, born and immigrant Americans, men and women, Southerners and Northerners. I have spent half the day reading these comments and am quite overcome at this point. To me this exchange of thoughts and feelings is more complex, more fascinating, deeper and infinitely more important to the future of our country and our world than the book that touched off the conversation, and I am grateful to everyone who posted an opinion here, but especially to those who have hung in with the conversation and responded personally to others’ comments. It isn’t easy to stay in conversation when there is so much disagreement. If we can do it, there’s hope for us yet.
March 6th, 2011 at 11:19 pm
I loved this book and tomorrow our book club is discussing it. There were over 460 holds on the book at the library when it was selected and the wait was more than worth it. Everyone I recommended this book to, lovvvvveeeeddd it as well! I am so excited to see the movie. I read many of the comments and as a Canadian who hears few accents aside from British and East Indian, I found the writing of the different voices helped define the different characters. To those of us with a naiive ear to southern accents and black speech, many African American accents, for lack of a better word, are hackneyed and full of broken English so I liked the way the author presented all the voices. We talk so fast in the north that the writing helped slow down the tempo which is how southerns speak, slow with a drawl, not all, but that’s where it comes from, doesn’t it. Loved it all!
March 8th, 2011 at 9:29 am
Hi Colleen,
“many African American accents, for lack of a better word, are hackneyed and full of broken English so I liked the way the author presented all the voices”
Just like I wouldn’t presume that many Canadians, for lack of a better word use “Aye?” after the end of each sentence, your post reflects just what is quite frustrating and rather sterotypical about Stockett’s novel. There’s no diversity in the black women, save for the ones closer to white, like Lulabelle, Yule May Crookle (no naps in her hair, signifying “good hair”) or Gretchen who conveniently all speak without a “southern” accent or as you put it so indelicately, “hackneyed and full of broken English”.
March 9th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
I find it ironic that a member from the same group that economically oppressed black folks — and made money off of our oppression now gets to do it again by writing a book about that same oppression. Isn’t life a hoot.
March 14th, 2011 at 8:50 am
It was difficult to accept the authenticity of Kathryn Stockett’s voice after wading through the first chapter. To compare this with a wonderful book such as “The Joy Luck Club”, a pleasurable read from the first page just does not compare. I’d squarely place this book into the “Eat Love Pray” bin where all the hype does not warrant all the attention given.
March 15th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
I LOVED THIS BOOK I COULDN’T GET ENOUGH!! SEQUEL???
March 19th, 2011 at 11:08 am
Just finished reading The Help. I grew up in the south in the sixties and here’s what I think — It portrays southern whites in the sixties as (for the most part) pretentious, bigoted racists, a portrayal that is biased and inaccurate. Naturally, it’s on the best seller list. It panders to the base human emotions of wanting to feel superior because, of course, the reader is not bigoted or racist. Unlike the author, I grew up in the deep south in the sixties. Most people I knew, white or black, were doing the best they could in a region with a lot of economic and social problems. As is true in any region, there were a few bad apples, but they were a tiny minority. I never knew anyone as mean, shallow or racist as Miss Hilly and her coterie. The real problem with this novel (it’s a novel, not history) is that it encourages regional hatreds and mistrust. Its appeal, besides being sensational, is that it allows people to assume that they are morally superior. We read about obnoxious people and then feel good about denouncing them.
March 21st, 2011 at 6:31 am
Can someone please tell this ignorant Englishwoman – what is Skeeter short for? A Mosquito or something else? Many thanks, Anne hayes
March 24th, 2011 at 2:39 am
I loved this book. Probably the best one we have had at our book club. Also the comments expressed above are quite varied. Very interesting. When you enjoy a book as much as I did this one you expect everyone will enjoy it. Can’t wait to discuss it at our next meeting.
March 28th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I was going to read this book. But in memory of my grandmother, I can’t. She was a domestic worker. Please believe me when I tell you that she DID NOT like or love her white employers or their children. I am sure white people would like to think that but it is a lie. Nine times out of ten, they were just doing what they had to do to survive and take care of their families. Corey, Onyx, and Nadia are on point.
March 28th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Hello Dorene,
Thanks for your post. Your sentiment was brought up on another board, and I think it’s picking up steam.
That is, while there are quite a few readers proclaiming how much love there was between employers and their “help” (and some of the testimonials are quite touching) those who identify themselves as former domestics speak of no similar affection, or in the large numbers as those who laud Stockett’s novel.
And I believe that’s the problem. So much was regulated by segregation, that now, years later, the controlling of how past employer/employee relationships as well as black/white relations were perceived differ greatly.
Thankfully, there’s enough recorded and documented history to show that affection had nothing to do with winning civil rights. It took blood, sweat and tears. The ultimate toll was the senseless murders of some courageous individuals, both black and white during the struggle for freedom.
OT:
**best non-fiction book I’ve read all year: Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns” which chronicles the great migration of African Americans from the south **
April 17th, 2011 at 2:59 am
Anne Hayes – Skeeter is short for mosquito – it’s in the book – Eugenia’s brother Carlton likens her to a mosquito all long,spindly and skinny as a baby, and her physical characteristics are frequently referred to as a point of difference, which the novel seems to be about – imagined, metaphorical and surface differences. Onyx, you must have missed the constant reference to Eugenia Phelan as a mosquito “Skeeter” (insect) in your headlong rush to see more insult and injury lurking behind every sentence. It would seem to suit your theory of ongoing persecution and conspiracy to consider her and every other “white” person a bloodsucker, no doubt! Nadia, you really do have to read the book to make comment- you seem to have gotten the wrong end of the stick entirely. There is nothing gratuitously humourous or callously caricatured in this story. It takes the injustice, the wrongness, the encultured and entrenched racism and “man’s inhumanity to man” very seriously.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
Hello Lily05,
I didn’t miss the Skeeter reference. I chose not to answer. Black people are allowed to do that now, you know.
Sorry, where are my manners. For the remainder of my post I’ll just ignore the hysterics in your post because I realize you love the story. I mean, you REALLY love the story. That’s a big part of the problem with the novel, and folks reaction to it, like yourself.
Because when the innuendo, negative idealogy and generations of demeaning depictions of the black culture are gladly accepted as “taken very seriously” in a novel that cracks jokes about the black culture at just about every turn, truly its got best seller written all over it.
It’s no wonder then, that Ablene Cooper or those close to her filed a lawsuit.
I look at the lawsuit as a way to make publicly known that enough is enough. That having a character with her likeness and a similar name who goes to church, yet still wonders if people think she used “black magic” to wish a venereal disease on another woman is not funny, but offensive.
In addition, that telling someone “don’t drink coffee or you’ll turn colored” is not funny, it’s offensive.
An it certainly doesn’t, as you say “take the injustice, wrongness, etc. very seriously.”
And while it’s admirable to instill positive affirmations within an employer’s young child, it’s a coward who’ll ignore her best friend’s children, especially children who witness the violent, physical abuse of their mother on a daily basis.
But of course, if that abused woman is simply the “sassy” maid stereotype, then the abuse may be easily overlooked.
It is also the height of offense to compare brown skin to a roach, especially with more than enough images during the period segregation was legal that demeaned the black culture.
And true enough, Ablene Cooper may not win her lawsuit. But at least the lawsuit may open a dialogue on what constitutes offensive stereotype in a minority character, versus paying homage.
You getting all this down Lily? For as much as you “love” this novel, some of use recognize it for what it really is.
But fear not. After seeing how bad the trailer for the movie is, I think once you see the movie you’ll realize the joke’s on ALL OF US. Because segregation is played for laughs, with the white characters as ditzy sit-com wives.
You might do well to join the real world and take a look at the shame and courage from when segregation was at its height, unless you want to continue to wallow in denial and wax nostalgic over the pages of The Help:
http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/wall-of-shame-and-courage/
May 2nd, 2011 at 7:52 am
I personally enjoyed the book very much, though I recognise why some commentators take issue with it. As regards the issue of dialect, however, I do think some of the comments above are a little unfair. Minny’s sections are nowhere near as ‘non-standard’ as Aibileen’s, while even Skeeter’s contain many colloquialisms and Southernisms. In other words, it isn’t as clear-cut a divide as some of the criticisms above have suggested. And while it is true that the Southern accent cuts across race, it would be naive to pretend that a black maid in the ’60s would not sound palpably different from her white employers.
May 12th, 2011 at 11:36 am
I’m one of the few people who did not like this book. Not only did the clumsy use of dialect bother me (white Southerners also have distinctive speech patterns; surely black maids with some education would have had better grammer) but I also was offended by the presentation of most of the maids as endlessly noble, forgiving, kind and long suffering, essential to their ditzy and inadequate employers (the book could have been subtitled ‘White Women Can’t Cope.’) Why? Do black people have to be paragons before they can be equal to whites? Only Minny had a mixture of good and not-so-good characteristics. Aibleen’s son, who was killed in an industrial accident, was a genius who was writing a book. Would his death have been any less sad if he was a not-so-genius? Perhaps this depiction of black characters is meant to be kind, but I found it stereotyped, serving to continue to show blacs as ‘the Other.’
May 31st, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I just loved this book The Help. One of the best I have read in a long long time. Yes it is a page turner and so proud that Kathryn Stockett gave us this opportunity to have been able to see how Maids were really treated…
Thank you Thank you Thank you…
Looking forward to the movie… Yeah!!!
June 7th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
I think some of the people posting on here ought to be ashamed of themselves. This is a person’s very first book! I’ll tell you what I got out of it. Love. That’s right. Love. And I’m not telling if I’m black or white, raised in the South or not. Where I WAS raised was in foster homes. I did not have a mother. I did not have a maid. I did not have a grandmother. And I most certainly never had anyone tell me I was smart. Or I was kind. Or I was important. When I read about Aibileen and Mae Mo iit made me cry. How I wish I would’ve had someone, anyone, tell me those things. When I got to the parts of Aibileen’s loving words I never once thought ‘Oh she’s a black maid, or Oh sheks a priveleged white child’ what I did was close my eyes and imagine Aibileen telling ME these things. I could have cared less what color or position or relationship to me Aibileen had. I loved this book because it made me feel comforted. Comforted by Aibileen’s love, comforted by Minnie being brave enough to talk back to her employers, comforted by Minnie having the courage to finally leave her abusive husband, comforted by Skeeter having the courage to get these women’s voices out there regardless of her own cconsequences as she could’ve been killed too. It is fiction and I don’t care if it was based on fact. And one of the things I particularly liked was it was women helping other women. I loved it and I long for the day when NO ONE sees color or economic standing. I long for the day when we women lift each other up no matter what and encourage each other. So instead of picking apart another woman’s very first book, who she thought no one would read, maybe instead of ragging on Ms. Stockett we should say ‘good job on writing your very first book. And whether we like it or not, Ms. Stockett YOU are important’.
June 16th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I just completed this novel and I must say that I LOVED it. As an African-American woman, age 29, I believe that it was a great read and I have recommended it to many. I believe that many of you are tearing this author apart, and it is unfair. Throughout this novel, may she have left some things out, yes. Did she cover every issue that she could dealing with the segregation of black and the dealing with whites, no. What she did do was touch on what she knew. I must say she did a great job. After reading the book it makes me want to read more nonfiction to get more accurate accounts of what went in during that time. I applaud this author. Not only for the great work but the courage to publish this piece. When I read the book she does not paint a pretty picture of white folks. She does not make them seem better than anyone else. If you really read this novel you would see that African Americans are depicted as the heros in the story. The stronger ones, the more intelligent ones. Again I applaud her for this work. How many authors convey the ignorance, the selfishness, and the lack of identity to white people?
I think that while many of us are looking at the words that are written on paper we fail to recognize some of the underlying concepts. On person mentioned the tragic death of the son. Did you ever stop to think that the tragic death was Abileens motivation to write, and to share what she wrote?
Please take a step back and stop being so negative.
I must add that while many people feel that this novel was stereotypic, I must say AGAIN…if you read the book, not only the words, comprehended the book, you would see that black people were not depicted in a stereotypical way, but a way that you see your mother, your grandmother and sometimes yourself… Loving, Caring, Determined, Honest, Loyal, and above ALL, Great women.
I loved this novel, will recommend it to all.
June 18th, 2011 at 3:11 am
The Help is a book of insults. It contains repeated, cruel slurs that were used against African Americans during segregation dressed up as amusing anecdotes.
It’s important for readers, particularly African American readers to know this, lest they get embarassed when professing admiration for a novel that has far too many negative myths that were excuses used to block integration and equality.
One major example:
Blacks having diseases.
While Kathryn Stockett has Hilly stating this in the novel, the author also uses Aibileen and Minny to resurrect this slur, as on Pg 23 both women discuss Aibileen’s “ability” to cast a venereal disease on a woman named Cocoa.
The “cootchie spoilt as a rotten oyster” was not only offensive, but touches upon additional negative innuedo spread about blacks during the dark days of bigotry, that we not only carried diseases but in particular venereal disease.
When Aibileen responds with “You saying people think I got the black magic?”
Yet another often used slur. The reasoning was that blacks, no matter what faith we professed would always revert back to “black magic”. Also note that Aibileen is supposed to be a devout Christian. She should be offended by peoples assumptions, however she appears enthralled by the possibility, thus showing how backwards both she and Minny are, causing the reader to chuckle. Which is what Stockett did when she took her show on the road and read Minny’s part in a “pseudo” black voice (video on You Tube).
A few other myths the book includes are the “no account” black males being absentee fathers. Again Stockett uses her black characters to resurrect these slights. Minny states “Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump. . .” which is an uncalled for sociological opinion, and one that showed Stockett was playing favorites. No white male lead character is called anything similar. Not even Stuart, who treats Skeeter shabbily. Or Constantine’s father, who has several bi-racial children out of wedlock with her mother.
These males are given a pass even though they practiced segregation. Stockett makes a point to add a twist, telling the readers that either “he’s too honest” (speaking of her father, Carlton Phelan) or “he is a good man” (speaking of Stuart) even Senator Stoolie Whitworth is given a pass, as Stockett portrays him as a conflicted man only doing the will of his constiuents, while he’s really a closet liberal.
No such “twists” are granted to the black males like Connor (absentee father who beds and abandons Constantine) or Minny’s father, who like Clyde, Aibileen’s ex is called “no account” and then there’s the brute character, Leroy, who Stockett uses to show just how slow of mind the character is when he utters the line “You don’t get tired, not till the tenth month” to his pregnant wife Minny, even though this is their sixth child.
And speaking of children, while Minny’s daughter Kindra is only five when the novel begins, Stockett plays favorites even with the littlest members of her book. Kindra is the “bratty black kid with attitude” as Minny hollers and unfairly brands her youngest child. Even Aibileen, who makes it her mission to instill positive affirmations in Mae Mobley has no scenes where she coddles or nurtures Minny’s youngest, and that’s a shame since Kindra is between a rock and a hard place (her sharp tongued mother and abusive father)
And while Minny is an abused woman, because she’s the “sassy” maid stereotype, she behaves contrary to all known medical data on someone subjected to almost daily physical violence, even enlisted to protect Celia, with a knife no less, while carrying her sixth child.
Non fiction books which do a far better job than The Help with less caricature and real testimonials are “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabelle Wilkerson and “At the Dark End of The Street” by Danielle McGuire.
June 18th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
For those who want more proof that Stockett’s novel (unwittingly I believe) contains demeaning and repeated tales that some bigots used as a means to block equality and integration, I’ve provided links, pictures and excerpts on this post:
http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/demeaning-ideology-in-the-help/
It’s important to understand Stockett putting this ideology in the mouths of her black characters is nothing new. There have been other celebrated literary novels where white authors took on a black voice and created characters who either expressed a self loathing against their race (The Confessions of Nat Turner, by Pulitzer prize winner William Styron) and used the image of the large, dark, thick dialected black character as either a docile, loyal follower of the main white protag (Imitation of Life by Fannie Hurst’s character of Delilah) or the sassy, mouthy, grumpy maid whose comedic quips endear him/her to readers with their blunt observations, sometimes aimed at their own culture (Mammy from Gone With The Wind. In the Help that character is Minny)
July 30th, 2011 at 5:08 am
PhyLinda says
July 29, 2011
I haven’t read the book, but I was at the Theater this pass Wed, at the NAACP event. I saw the movie, and I lOVED IT. I didn’t get a chance to stay for the Q&A; sorry about that.I don’t know who wrote the screenplay, but I wondered why you weren’t there to take a bow as the book writer before the movie started. Again, I take my hat off to you, I enjoyed every minute of it. I’m a book, and screenplay writer myself. I wish you all the success in the world, and God bless.
August 6th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Then I guess Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and Harper Lee should have kept their mouths shut and found another occupation.
Some people should just stay away from FICTION.
August 12th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Some of you people obviously did NOT grow up in the deep South during the 60′s. I am white and I did. I heard the accent and the movie portrayed it accurately (still lingers in some – just heard it today). I’ve heard the mispronounced words, among blacks and whites, both. When I grew up not a white or black person I knew said “fornication” correctly. They all said “forniFIcation.” I’ve seen so much of what was portrayed in the movie with the exception of the rich elites because I never knew any.
My parents told me that coffee would stunt your growth. Should short people be offended by that?
It’s ironic to read in this column that some of you who are black would be offended by the movie (didn’t read the book yet…only commenting on the movie) because when we left I told my husband that my white parents (in their 80′s) would be very offended by that movie because they would refuse to believe that whites treated black people that way. Every point didn’t have to be exactly accurate nor completely free of demeaning comments about white or black for the point to be made. I cried at this movie just like I do every time I visit our local civil rights museum because I know how mistreated the blacks were treated.
August 14th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Most of the website reviews I’ve seen for this novel seem to focus on a debate as to whether or not the author is…., I guess “qualified” would be the word, to write a work of fiction in which she creates a voice for two main characters who are black maids of the 60′s, when she herself is not black, or a maid, etc.. Whether she was qualified or not, I enjoyed this book. Of course, I also really enjoyed “Watership Down”, even though author Richard Adams is not, and never was, a rabbit.
August 23rd, 2011 at 4:29 am
I enjoyed the book very much. I am tempted to accept the opinions of the people that grew up in the South during that period as the most valid. I was born in 1930 in Los Angeles, CA and raised there. My family was more or less in the socio/economic class depicted here. I would say that the relationships shown here between the white women and our “colored” help was right on. The accent used in the book was a little stronger that that used by our help but was still true to my memory. I have long since learned that people who have lived through certain times very often know things about those times that others trying to look backwards from today do not. As a matter of such detail I would like to comment on Cheryl’s mentioning the blue eyes in the photo and how that could not have been as color photography had not yet been invented. I have “color” photos of myself at age three through five and one of my grandmother. It was very common in those days to have photos of family members “colorised”. This was done by hand and came out looking very realistic. They didn’t look painted at all.
September 25th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
The Help controversy wasn’t simply that the African American characters had a thick dialect, but that the white characters were practically devoid of one.
Skeeter, Hilly, Stuart, and the like spoke as if they were from the North in many of the scenes. But what Stockett did isn’t anything new. Many white writers, in an attempt to show how races differ use dialect to achieve this.
The problem occurs when the minority character winds up being a comedic foil because their language skills read so poorly.
In many sections of The Help, that’s what happens with the maids.
Stockett admitted she intended to put “different” voices on the page in this interview:
“My mother and stepmother speak very properly. I really enjoyed putting two very different voices on the page together. I don’t think I’d be capable of writing it any differently.”
http://www.atlantamagazine.com/books/Story.aspx?id=1271657
At least the audio version of the book and the film don’t have the white characters devoid of a regional accent (which would sound rather strange on screen). For example, Hilly screams “You are FARD” at Minny.
The other problem isn’t just how the black characters say things, but what they say. The movie faces the same criticism the book did, with characters uttering stereotypical lines like this:
“Minny don’t burn no chicken” and “Fried chicken tend to make you feel better about life” “You is kind, you is smart, you is im-po-tent”
It’s throwback dialogue. Lines similar to Prissy’s “I don’t know nothing about birthin’ no babies” or TV’s “What you talking ’bout Willis?”
When blacks are saddled with this type of cringe worthy dialogue and dialect, it harkens back to the days of Amos n’ Andy, where these beloved caricatures of African Americans were also sworn to be “authentic”
October 6th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
i had a friend who moved to the south in the era of the book. she was appalled at the wages paid. she offered to pay her help two or three times the going rate. the woman refused the money saying it would mark her and cause her to be ostracized. she told me the black “help (both men AND women) were not treated nicely at all. she and her husband lasted a year and then, quickly, moved back north.
i loved the book. i read it for what “it was”. not for verbiage, spelling, speech or whatever. the naysayers need to “get a life”. why oh why cannot you admit the blacks were been treated very very shabbily “back then”?
read the book for what it is. a commentary of how superior some white folks think they were then. perhaps still. i have one question: do you all think heaven is segregated? end of commentary here.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
What I find most appalling is the intellectual snobbery espoused by almost every commenter (kudos to the others, though).
And I can’t help but comment on the snob near the beginning who made jabs about the author’s use of “alright”, while spelling “consistent” as “consistant”. The irony is rich, almost as rich as the snobbery oozing forth from so many here. (Level of education does not reflect one’s intelligence, nor does it cure a small mind.)
The book was well-written and was a good, though-provoking, moving read. Period. And it does accurately portray the dialect of many Southerners— a yankee who claims to have spent a few years living in the South has no ability to accurately assess our richly varied dialect(s), and sounds foolish doing so.
December 5th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
The book The Help is in real need of help. Kathry Stockett could have done a better job with The Help only if she had spent some time among the African American people of Charleston or Beaufort SC or maybe even Savannah Ga. In other words, what she wrote was nowhere close to the dialect of the “Colored” folks of the 1950′s or 60′s.
She needed an editor with “geechee” roots if she wanted to speak the language of the old South and to write a book about it. The real book for example should have included writting similar to the following: da book bees ok, but E ain’t nut’n close ta da real ting.
The above example was not taken from The Help, but its written to show how most of the maids would have spoken during this time of poorly paid servitude.
May 8th, 2012 at 2:10 am
The Help
I read this book and at times laughed right out loud. The Help was a book we were told to read for African American Women’s History. I just yesterday turned to the last page and was nearly annoyed to see that a book written in the voice of the old south was a white girl. Its the trailer that delighted me as well as certain places within the written word. After I have finished with the book I will give the book to my kid sister who at 51 should learn a thing or two. I found that years ago I was blessed to have had an irreverent true as true gold woman in my life that if my Darlene were to put pen to paper she with the tales of her family could have written circles around the author of the Help. I hope to see the movie soon.
May 22nd, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Wow. What a powerful thread. I have seen the movie, am going to read the book, and I am a white male who grew up in the North in the 60′s.
It is always interesting to see people read other’s thoughts, opinions, and research, and miss the point. Forget references to other historical, emotional events, (holocaust etc.) if you can’t get the sense of what this book does- imagine reading a book about YOUR family, in which the author has some feel for your Dad, but gets your Mom COMPLETELY wrong. Keep in mind, it’s a work of fiction, but it uses your Mom’s name, her hometown, etc., and you feel betrayed and violated reading those pages. Don’t you feel qualified to comment, meaningfully, on that book? I THINK (but cannot know) that that is the sense that some of the posters are trying to achieve, here.
Yes, it’s fiction, yes, KS has free speech, but if an author writes about a period of history that is so powerfully emotional for a certain group of people, and doesn’t research it or get it accurately on paper, she should absolutely be called on the carpet for it.
If KS had written a little story of her rememberances of her relationship with HER maid only, it would be hard to judge this harshly. But she wrote about an entire class of people (African American maids),a real town and people without seeming (my opinion reading the various posts) to get the important things right.
By the way, many of the more agressive pro book & author posts don’t seem to have read the references and links posted by critics. Please go back & read the WORDS in the posts, once you’ve calmed own, and check the references and the links. You may change your thoughts. I am stunned at the work of Peggy Macintosh named in an early post, all I had to do was google her name and “knapsack”, and found a concept I had no idea about- just proving I don’t know as much about race as I thought. Very eye opening.
I thank everyone for helping me improve my understanding of the book, especially the ones who were thoughtful and scholarly in their posts. I can read it with a little less ignorance and some idea of other perspectives.