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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.