The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I keep thinking about this book. First, I feel like I need to give a disclaimer. There was a scene in the book that I wish wasn't there. It's not a love scene, but it was disturbing. I understand that to the author it would have been an important part, though, because it is the first time Minny ever experienced a white woman step out of her place of comfort and do something for her. And then there is some language in it. Why did she wait until I was sucked in a few chapters before she did that? It makes me tempted again to justify that I see why the author did it in trying to tell the story in the voices of the characters, but I still don't like to read that and feel like I should mention it before someone picks up this book because I said I liked it -- and then they'll think I don't mind books with language and a disturbing scene when I do. I just don't know how to explain to myself that I didn't like that, but I did like this book.

Anyway -- on to the book. It is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, and it is told through the viewpoint of three women. One is a young white woman who wants to be a journalist, and the other two are maids to the rich white women of Jackson. They are "the help."
In an attempt to have their voices heard after being silent and frustrated their whole lives, these maids agree to tell their story to a white woman who wants to write about what it's like to be a colored maid in Mississippi from the viewpoint of the maids.

It was such an emotional book. I laughed right out loud, and I even got real tears in my eyes. I was afraid of what the white people were going to do to them. I felt such contempt for the white women who were so calloused and rude. I was moved when Skeeter and Aibileen really became friends, a white woman and a black woman crossing lines and breaking rules that their society said would always be that way. How frightening to try to change something that is ingrained not only through violence, but taught to the minds of innocent children by their mothers from before they even enter preschool.

It made me think about my own ancestors living in the south. My mom and dad were in the high school class that first integrated about 9 black students into the white high school in Edenton. I remember asking Mom about it one time, but she didn't have too much to say about it. She said they were pretty quiet and she didn't really know them. I think that's probably typical of high school students to be in their own world, but then coming to the same high school didn't bring them to the same neighborhoods and after school hangouts. Those lines were still drawn when I was in high school in that same town, maybe not as strictly adhered to but they were there. My grandparents used the term "colored people," but I know Granddaddy was friends with a black man named Sambo. I would like to think that my family members that I love would have known even back then that black people were not diseased, dirty, and immoral just because of their skin color. Even if social lines were drawn so they couldn't associate too much with people who were different. I would like to think that I myself don't think of stereotypes first and question them secondly.

Anyway, this would be a fun book to discuss with somebody. There is so much in it.