Book Review #7 - Helpfully Difficult
Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Genre: Historical Fiction
Overall Rating: 3.5
I know, right? Reading something off the “mundane” bestseller list? Surely not! But it is indeed true, I’ve gone on a kick trying to read the things people ask me about at work.
This book was definitely an interesting read. It’s set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 and is narrated by three women who live there. Two of them are African American and are maids in white households. The other is a young white woman, recently graduated college and just moved back home. The main plot in the book is just what it says on the tin: it’s about what it meant to be a black maid in the South during that time period*. The prose flows well and it is a pretty quick read. The subject matter is not easy, and Stockett doesn't pull many punches. The story dwells on silences, like the silence after an insult, while the white lady justifies it to herself, the maid tries to pretend it didn't hurt and the children try to puzzle out what is happening. The book highlights those silences, and tries to illuminate them.
Stockett does a good job of making her characters believable and sympathetic, Minny (the sassy one) in particular is fun. I like books with multiple narrators, and I felt like it is used well by Stockett. I felt like I got to know all of the women pretty well, and the dialect was fun to read. I kept wondering about the men’s perspective in all this, but since it’s a book mostly for women by a woman I can let it go.
The biggest trouble I had with the book was mainly the author herself. This is because I’ve taken way too many UCSC classes to be able to easily swallow a white woman writing a book about what it means to be a black maid in the 60’s. In the book itself the white woman talks about wanting a new perspective. [spoiler alert! Highlight to read.] “Everyone knows how we white people feel…Maragaret Mitchell covered that [in Gone With the Wind] ...want to show a side that’s never been examined before…because no one ever talks about it.” (123). Yet she is one white woman writing this book, and while I don’t doubt that she’s done her research, at the end of the day she is putting words in those women’s mouths.
Do I think that this is a story worth telling? Absolutely. Do I think that Stockett has a “right” to tell it? I don’t know. It’s in the fiction section, which theoretically gives you the right to make up anything and write it down. Would any woman, whatever the color of her skin, have the “right” to tell that story unless she actually went through it? What if it had been written by a man? Does the color of your skin really dictate what stories you are able to tell? Does the fact that I am female mean that I should not be writing slash fan fiction, because I am clearly not a gay man?
I don’t have easy answers for these questions. On the one hand I admire Stockett for bringing these questions up, because this is something that doesn’t get talked about. On the other, I am frustrated that Stockett can write a novel that is a bestseller, but no one comments on the problems of authorship, and Octavia Butler’s books just sit there, collecting dust on the shelf. Perhaps that’s not fair of me to say, but you know? I notice, and I’m sure others notice it too. But but but…so many buts and counter arguments that it would drive anyone crazy. Is it more problematic to let the issue of Stockett’s race go, or to make an issue out of it? Especially since bringing it up reinforces a label/system that only exists in our minds.
Again, I don’t know. All I know is that I do believe it is better to discuss these things. I also think that Stockett would agree, because she understands the power and negativity that silence holds. So read this book, then read Toni Morrison, then read Margarett Mitchell, then go out and have a discussion with someone about it. I promise after you do it once it gets a lot less scary.
* I find it interesting that I had to resist the urge to type “that time of racism”. Racism is of course, always happening, although I think we can all agree that 1962 was a bad time. That time seems so long ago, a time that people were forced to use a separate bathroom outside the house she worked in, simply because of the color of her skin. Yet that was only 49 years ago, and the children of that time are making government policy right now. I don’t mean to imply that the older generation is racist simply because they lived at that time, but it is fact. Just as my children will never know a time that a black man wasn’t President, so I have never known a time when you had a specific place to sit on the bus. I don’t know what that means, but it’s…interesting.
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Genre: Historical Fiction
Overall Rating: 3.5
I know, right? Reading something off the “mundane” bestseller list? Surely not! But it is indeed true, I’ve gone on a kick trying to read the things people ask me about at work.
This book was definitely an interesting read. It’s set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 and is narrated by three women who live there. Two of them are African American and are maids in white households. The other is a young white woman, recently graduated college and just moved back home. The main plot in the book is just what it says on the tin: it’s about what it meant to be a black maid in the South during that time period*. The prose flows well and it is a pretty quick read. The subject matter is not easy, and Stockett doesn't pull many punches. The story dwells on silences, like the silence after an insult, while the white lady justifies it to herself, the maid tries to pretend it didn't hurt and the children try to puzzle out what is happening. The book highlights those silences, and tries to illuminate them.
Stockett does a good job of making her characters believable and sympathetic, Minny (the sassy one) in particular is fun. I like books with multiple narrators, and I felt like it is used well by Stockett. I felt like I got to know all of the women pretty well, and the dialect was fun to read. I kept wondering about the men’s perspective in all this, but since it’s a book mostly for women by a woman I can let it go.
The biggest trouble I had with the book was mainly the author herself. This is because I’ve taken way too many UCSC classes to be able to easily swallow a white woman writing a book about what it means to be a black maid in the 60’s. In the book itself the white woman talks about wanting a new perspective. [spoiler alert! Highlight to read.] “Everyone knows how we white people feel…Maragaret Mitchell covered that [in Gone With the Wind] ...want to show a side that’s never been examined before…because no one ever talks about it.” (123). Yet she is one white woman writing this book, and while I don’t doubt that she’s done her research, at the end of the day she is putting words in those women’s mouths.
Do I think that this is a story worth telling? Absolutely. Do I think that Stockett has a “right” to tell it? I don’t know. It’s in the fiction section, which theoretically gives you the right to make up anything and write it down. Would any woman, whatever the color of her skin, have the “right” to tell that story unless she actually went through it? What if it had been written by a man? Does the color of your skin really dictate what stories you are able to tell? Does the fact that I am female mean that I should not be writing slash fan fiction, because I am clearly not a gay man?
I don’t have easy answers for these questions. On the one hand I admire Stockett for bringing these questions up, because this is something that doesn’t get talked about. On the other, I am frustrated that Stockett can write a novel that is a bestseller, but no one comments on the problems of authorship, and Octavia Butler’s books just sit there, collecting dust on the shelf. Perhaps that’s not fair of me to say, but you know? I notice, and I’m sure others notice it too. But but but…so many buts and counter arguments that it would drive anyone crazy. Is it more problematic to let the issue of Stockett’s race go, or to make an issue out of it? Especially since bringing it up reinforces a label/system that only exists in our minds.
Again, I don’t know. All I know is that I do believe it is better to discuss these things. I also think that Stockett would agree, because she understands the power and negativity that silence holds. So read this book, then read Toni Morrison, then read Margarett Mitchell, then go out and have a discussion with someone about it. I promise after you do it once it gets a lot less scary.
* I find it interesting that I had to resist the urge to type “that time of racism”. Racism is of course, always happening, although I think we can all agree that 1962 was a bad time. That time seems so long ago, a time that people were forced to use a separate bathroom outside the house she worked in, simply because of the color of her skin. Yet that was only 49 years ago, and the children of that time are making government policy right now. I don’t mean to imply that the older generation is racist simply because they lived at that time, but it is fact. Just as my children will never know a time that a black man wasn’t President, so I have never known a time when you had a specific place to sit on the bus. I don’t know what that means, but it’s…interesting.