The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

I was prepared to hate this book--I'm usually irritated when white storytellers (whether in book or film) appropriate African-American stories. But friends kept telling me how much they enjoyed the book, and Novel Conversations chose it as our August book. So, I picked up The Help and surprise, surprise....I enjoyed it.

Stockett creates three memorable characters whose experiences in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, provide a window into the lives of black domestic workers and young white women who want to be more than hypocritical Junior League do-gooders. First we meet Aibileen, an African-American woman who has raised 17 white babies (her only child died in a tragic workplace accident not too long before the book begins), trying to inoculate them against racism and the pain of being ignored by their mothers. Her current child is Mae Mobley, a sweet little girl whose mother Elizabeth actually seems to hate her.

Elizabeth is friendly with the book's second major character, Skeeter--a recent college graduate who wants to be a writer but can only find a job answering housekeeping questions for the local newspaper. Since as a white woman whose mother has always had "help," she has no idea how to solve the dilemmas posed, she turns to Aibileen for help. Eventually, they come up with the idea of publishing a book of interviews with African-American maids in which they tell what it is like to work for white women, raising their children, feeding their families, and living with their intentional and unintentional cruelties as well as the genuine affection in some relationships.

The first woman they recruit for the project is Minny, who has been fired numerous times because she simply can't stop herself from speaking out. She has been fired by Hilly, another friend of Elizabeth and Skeeter. She finally finds a job (via some subterfuge by Aibileen) with Celia, a somewhat trashy woman who married Hilly's former boyfriend. Meanwhile, Minny has five children and an abusive husband with whom she must cope on the home front.

The three women know that their project could have serious negative consequences for them and the other women they recruit to take part--the murder of Medgar Evers and the March on Washington take place while they are conducting interviews. But they press on. When the book is published, there is immediate speculation that it is about Jackson, and some people recognize themselves in stories--good and bad.

The book has some weaknesses--there are a lot of different plot lines and some of them become a bit soapy and predictable. Skeeter's two friends, Elizabeth and Hilly (who, of course, are lost as friends before the book ends), seem to have no redeeming characteristics. Stockett does a better job with Skeeter's mother, who has both glaring weaknesses and endearing qualities. Also, I still have some qualms about a white author writing dialect. Overall, however, The Help is an interesting exploration of its time and place, and the scenes in which Aibileen tries to prepare Mae Mobley to be different kind of Southern white woman are very moving.

Favorite passage:

I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. A flash from the future. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.