The Help Explains the Way Things Were

I read a book that I found in a box in my neighborhood, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett:

It was written 16 years ago and was turned into a movie. The movie, starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as the three lead characters from the book and , was made in 2011. Sadly, I had never heard of it. This was her debut novel.

Stockett grew up in Mississippi and went to the University of Alabama. She is four years younger than me. While we obviously have some big differences (gender, religion), I find that I have a lot in common with Stockett. She was very close to her Black housekeeper, who died when she was 16. Growing up, I had several Black housekeepers that I felt were close, especially Lillie Mae. Stockett ended up moving to NYC after college. So did I! We both found our spouses while living in NYC.

The book is about the Black perspective on being a housekeeper for a white family in the 1960s in Mississippi. Stockett does a good job in my view. The leads characters were working to get a book published by Harper & Row in NYC, and they did! They published it anonymously and included the stories from 10 others too.

The housekeepers were treated very poorly and paid very little. One of the key employers, Hilly, who is a terrible person, is highly concerned about the housekeepers "spreading their diseases" and fights to convince others to create separate toilets for their help to use.

In my view, slavery was a horrible thing, and, sadly, post-slavery was not done very well. Stockett was well aware of this, and she did an excellent job of illustrating this.