As the "elder librarian" at RB, I was actually ALIVE during the 1960's. Involved in school, softball, my friends, family activities, and so on, I was barely aware of life outside of Illinois - and I lived in a town with very little diversity. In other words, I led an unrealistic and sheltered life. The big news was about Kennedy's assassination, the increasing drug use (especially out in California, where the hippies were!), the space race against the Russians, and the protests against the Vietnam War. I don't remember hearing much about the Civil Rights movement (other than a unit in my U.S. History class in about 1969) until I was an adult. I didn't know any African Americans, and their problems were remote -- it was like hearing about wars and unrest in other countries.
The Help, a first novel by Kathryn Stockett, does an amazing job of making the Civil Rights era come alive. First of all, it doesn't read like a history lesson, a moralistic tale, or a documentary. It's a wonderful story surrounding three very strong female characters in Jackson, Mississippi.
Eugenia ("Skeeter") Phelan has just graduated from college and wants to be a writer. Having failed to get a job, she has reluctantly returned to her parents' plantation home and drops right back into her social group of women who spend their days at the country club, at card parties, shopping, or visiting with friends. She resents being under the thumb of her very-controlling mother, who wants only to see her engaged or married. Skeeter sets out to assert her independence by getting a job writing a housekeeping column in the local paper. However, she knows NOTHING about keeping house -- and so she turns to:
Aibileen, the housekeeper for one of Skeeter's friends. (Of course, Aibileen can't say No when Skeeter asks for her help!) They meet in secret so that Skeeter can pump Aibileen for "tricks of the trade" to include in her column. As they speak, Skeeter becomes increasingly aware of the perspective of the black domestic help who toil for the whites - they are "trusted to raise the white children, but not to polish the household silver." (Publisher's Weekly) Aibileen has raised 17 white children, but, we discover later in the novel, she leaves them when they lose their toddler innocence and "color blindness". As Skeeter's awareness of the rampant racism grows, she decides to write about it in a collection of essays, each one about a different housekeeper, cook, maid, or other domestic worker in town. To recruit more subjects for her book, she needs the help of:
Minnie, Aibileen's best friend, who has been fired from many jobs through the years because of her habit of mouthing off to her white employers.
One thing I liked about the book was its unpredictable turns -- so I'm not going to say much more about the story line -- but I will praise the character development. It would be too easy to make these women cardboard cutouts to represent the cause of civil rights, or to represent a stereotype of a kind of person, just to build a convincing story. But each of these women is so much more - and we slowly discover things about them throughout the story which make them deep and real.
As the women take incredible risks to continue to meet and share their stories, we also hear news headlines of the day - about Martin Luther King's peace march on Washington, DC, about the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Alabama which killed four little girls, about efforts to integrate the schools, etc. - and we realize that change was brought about by such brave people as the women in this book. Not by the laws, but by the people who caused those laws to be enforced.
Highly recommended -- 4 out of 4 stars
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