Monday, February 28, 2011

The Help by Kathleen Stockett

Last year,  The Help became the most requested interlibrary loan book that I have ever seen at our library, and now I get it. Our book club has read a lot of great books this year depicting race struggles both in the US and in other countries. Sometimes I kind of get bogged down by reading too much in a "theme" like this, but reading The Help was like a strong, cool spring wind that rushes you, taking your breath away: it takes you by surprise, is refreshing, and warns you not to get too comfortable because the bite of winter is not long gone.

The story unfolds through three different viewpoints, told in alternating sections. These three women represent three different perspectives on the issue of race in America in the early 1960's. Miss Skeeter is a budding writer who just wants to escape the small town where she grew up so that she can become the woman she knows she is inside. She has come home from college with a degree instead of a husband, something that her social-climbing friends just can't understand. Skeeter's mother doesn't help matters, always criticizing Skeeter's clothes, hair, and manner, making Skeeter an insecure mess. Aibileen is the maid for one of Skeeter's "friends" who has lost her only child and who loves the white children she is paid to tend. She is an intelligent, insightful woman who is trapped in a job much beneath her by her race and her race alone. Minny is Skeeter's very outspoken friend, also a black maid, who can't seem to keep a job because of her "big mouth" and pride. She is abused by her husband and loathed by the white ladies, but she finally finds a maid job with an unusual white woman who has come from a poor background in the South.

It is Miss Skeeter who brings all these characters together in a story within a story. She is asked by a New York publisher to write a book about the "colored" maids in her town, exposing their real lives to the world. At first Skeeter has a very hard time convincing any of the maids to come forward, jeopardizing not only their jobs by telling the truth, but their very lives which become threatened by whites who may seek revenge for the exposure to their lives and prejudices. It is Aibileen's struggle then, too, to help Miss Skeeter, who she initially mistrusts but grows to love. She wants desperately to tell her story, but she also wants it to mean something to all the other maids. She knows that their stories will be a tiny step in helping abolish segregation and injustices due to race.

Do these powerful women find their voice in the end? Does the book they write ever get published? Does the KKK seek retribution for their boldness? Does Miss Skeeter ever get out of her small town? Do Minny and Aibileen ever get a better life and is it everything they hoped? By the end of this beautifully told story, you will know all these answers, and I hope you will be as moved as I was.  I hope you will be moved enough to try to end prejudice where you see it in your life. Because it always takes the first person to say "No, this wrong!" before the right and truth can be found. 

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