The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I took the long weekend to read this book for Book Club. I have seen the movie, I was definitly motivated, but for some reason everytime I took this book home I couldn't start it. I think it was the dialect. So, I bought my copy from Amazon and kept it til I was ready to read it. Sunday was jam day and that's want I did, all day, and into Monday morning. It is an excellent book, everyone knows that by now. Kathryn's voice was so true. All of her characters are fully developed, showing their good side as well as the difficult parts of their personalities. A native daughter of Mississippi, the author used stories from home, stories from the help that lived with her family, and stories from her Grandaddy. Demetrie was the name of the domestic help that came into the family life when her dad was a boy, who brought the babies home from the hospital, and cared for them for many years. She told stories to the children and told Miss Kathryn that, "she was beautiful," even if she wasn't, just like Abileen tells dear poor little Mae Mobley, That part of the story really toched me, I want to be the fairy godmother who whispers into my grandchildren's ear as they fall off the sleep, "you is kind, you is smart, you is wonderful." As I read this book, I became more aware how very dangerous life in Mississippi was during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement. The author mentions in in an interview on a website that, "Skeeter was the hardest to write because she was constantly stepping across that line I was taught not to cross. Growing up, there was a hard and firm rule that you did not discuss issues of color. You changed the subject if someone brought it up, and you changed the channel when it was on television." At the end of the book the author tells someone in New York that, My hometown is number three in the nation for gang-related murders." Because that surprised me I had to google Jackson, Mississippi gang-related murder and found this story from August 2011. This disturbs me, but we are living in a hate filled society, and the race issues are as prevelant as ever. Another thing that was brought out in our discussion was the amount of attention that a white women receives for writing the black views of the domestic help, when clearly books have been written form the black point of view and have received less attention. From the back of the book, Telling Memories of Southern Women by Susan Tucker is mentioned by the author. Interviews with forty women from both races are recored in this book published by  Louisiana State University Press in 2002. I remember a book by Dori Saunders, Clover, that shares her farming life stories from South  Carolina. Maybe other readers can suggest books that have been written by African American authors on this subject.