Last
Friday (9/11/09) was a day of mourning for our nation and also the
anniversary of my mom's death. I still miss her every day, and my
feeling of loss is triggered in myriad little ways -- like hearing
something she would have thought was funny or pondering an idea and
knowing she would have "gotten" it in a way no one else could. Often
it's my wanting to share a book with her.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett was a novel I desperately wanted to discuss with Mom.
The
story takes place in the early 1960s and is told through the voices of
three women, all natives of Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen has been
working for white families all her life and has lovingly reared 17 white
children. Minny has also been "the help" for white folks all her life,
though her incorrigibly sassy mouth has gotten her fired from several
positions. 24-year-old Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a white girl and a
recent graduate of Ole Miss. She dreams of becoming a writer, and she
needs to find something she's passionate enough to write about.
Unlike
her white, middle-class parents and nearly everyone around her, Skeeter
isn't overtly racist, though she is naiive and rather patronizing toward the
"help." When a long-time friend rallies support for not allowing black
maids to use the toilets in their employers' houses (they have different
diseases, you know), Skeeter decides to write a book in which a dozen
of Jackson's maids, with their names disguised, talk about their
experiences. It is a tremendously risky project, but one that, for the
first time ever, gives these twelve women a voice.
In
The Help,
the author explores several layers of racism in the Deep South in the
early '60s. These black women spent their lives serving white families,
and often loved the people for whom they worked and were loved by them
in return. Yet they were considered too unclean to use the families'
toilets, and they had to remain silent, acquiesce to all their employers
demands, and avoid drawing attention to themselves.
At the end of
a grueling day of cooking, cleaning, ironing, and childcare, these
women went home to do all their own housework and cooking and care for
their own children. At the same time, they were going home to men who
were sometimes treated them much worse than their employers did.
I didn't find this exploration of the subject as powerful as that in
Mudbound
by Hilary Jordan. And since this was primarily Skeeter's story -- a
tale of a young white woman beginning to open her eyes to some of the
injustices around her -- it only skimmed the surface of the racial
issues that existed in this time and place. However, I found
The Help to be a compelling story.
I
was moved by this book, and as I said, I longed to discuss it with Mom.
It is hard to fathom the level of bigotry that was virtually
unquestioned in that time and place, where a black person's life could
be ruined simply to protect a white woman's pride. Yet my mother grew up
there. She was born in a small town near Greenwood, Mississippi in
1940. She worked hard in her parents cafe, which opened before dawn to
serve coffee and biscuits to white farmers before they went out to toil
in the fields.
She once told me a story about a man named Exxo
Bassey who had come into the cafe for breakfast. He left, pulled his
truck away from the curb without looking behind him, and crashed into a
car driven by a black man. Exxo was entirely at fault, but all the black
man could do was stare at the street mumbling, "I am sorry sir, I'm
sorry .... I'm very sorry ..." and pray there would be no retaliation.
The good folks in the cafe were unequivocal in their opinion. Obviously,
that "nigger" had no business being there in the first place. (Driving
on a public street on his way to work? The audacity of it!)
This moment,
and many others like it, made a deep, painful impression on my mom. She
once told me she had no one to teach her racism was wrong -- as far as
she knew, that idea didn't even exist in that time and place. But she
always
knew. She couldn't wait to finish college and get the heck out of the butt crack of Mississippi.
She once explained to me that it was nearly impossible to really
get just
how deep this racial hatred ran. Two of our relatives had been
complaining that the newspaper published pictures of African-American
brides in the wedding section. This was in the 1990's. "They don't
comprehend that black people think, feel, and breathe as we do," Mom
said. It's deeply, bone-jarringly chilling.
Again, while this novel lacked the depth and power of some other accounts of this time period, it was a rich, engaging novel that told an important story. I also enjoyed the history reflected in this book. We
see the murders of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and Martin Luther
King Jr. We see glimmers of changes coming. Dr. King has drawn thousands
of white and black activists to march from Selma, Alabama. There is an
unknown new singer named Bob Dylan, a few girls are wearing their hair
long and straight, and one even dresses in tie dyed t-shirts. They've even gone and invented a pill that keeps women from getting pregnant.
In the words of the aforementioned musician, The Times They are a'
Changin'!
Another thing I loved about the book was the colorful
and richly developed characters, including Aibileen, Minny, Skeeter, and
Celia, a good-hearted, insecure white hillbilly who married a wealthy
Jackson man. I felt as if I was sitting in these women's kitchens,
talking to them about their lives.
On several different levels,
The Help
touches lightly on the brutality of racial injustice in 1960s Mississippi and explores the assumptions people make about each other. It also reflects the courage of
people -- like Skeeter and my mom -- who can begin to see through the smoke and
think independently, and -- above all -- the human traits and
experiences that bind us all together.
Read more reviews of this book at
The Book Lady's Blog,
A Novel Menagerie, and at
Chaotic Compendiums
Rating: 4
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not
For Me |
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