markzugelberg

** spoiler alert ** Although the book centered around race and race relations, it was not civil rights that motivated the narrators to continue on their quest to write the maids’ stories. I don’t know if the author knew this, but it delicately wove the natural human desire to exist into its story, which was one of the more beautiful parts of the book. We all just want to know that our story exists, it doesn’t have to matter, others don’t have to care about the details, but we are all entitled to our own story. This was something that the maids never had, the knowledge that they were also entitled to a story. Once Miss Skeeter asked them, they had to start acknowledging their own existence before they could gather the courage and tell their story. Right after finding out about the murder of Medgar Evers, Minnie and Abilene discuss what would happen to them if they were found out: “This ain’t…we ain’t doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.” (196) The goal for them was not to be political and make a statement and demand rights, but for them and countless others, the goal was to exist, not as African Americans but as human beings. So simple and natural of a desire, and yet denied to them for hundreds of years. What happens when after hundreds of years being denied the right to exist, then what? What happens when you get that back? Or maybe that’s my whiteness that says existing is dependent upon outside forces… This could get ugly, so I’ll just stop here. Beautiful in the book, though. This was the only highlight for me from the book. At first, I thought it was weird that the author was white, from Alabama, living in New York. But I tried to not let that cloud my judgment. After all, I really thought that The Poisonwood Bible was a beautiful novel, why couldn’t she do it too? The difference? What is so bad about The Help? A few thoughts: Miss Celia, although not from money or status, and not from Jackson, was still from the South. And, in my mind, if you are from the South in the mid-20th century, you get race and you get Jim Crow. If you are poor white trash, race would arguably become more prevalent in your line of thinking. Kathryn Stockett’s character did not seem believable, but more there for comic relief. Overall, the book felt like it should be in Oprah’s book club, although even she might have issues with the book and Kathryn Stockett. A bit too feel-good, a bit too safe, very white in its perspective, and it felt like I was reading a book that came into existence after the movie had been made – that’s how much it felt like a movie. As luck would have it, The Help will be hitting a theater near you in the not-so-distant future. And Ms. Stockett’s best friend is directing it. It seems that Kathryn Stockett doesn’t have the consideration that her character Miss Skeeter has. The book that was being written within the book was non-fiction, and developed strictly based on in-person interviews with maids who were currently working in Jackson. The book written by Miss Stockett was fiction, as far as I know not based on any interviews with maids from the 60’s, instead based on her flawed memory of life in Jackson as a kid, and with historic facts that were strategically placed in the novel at various times, and sometimes not even accurate on their timing with the novel. Kathryn Stockett writes like she is writing about the elephant in the room, when clearly the times have changed enough that she is writing about the elephant in the room from Jackson, MS in the 1960’s. The new elephant in the room – the one in 2009 when the book came out – is that she is white, writing in the dialect of black maids, and without any historically accurate first-hand facts to drive her fictional narrative. It’s like she is playing out exactly what she is trying to criticize. In the 60’s in Mississippi, you were allowed to acknowledge the differences, but not question them. In the 2000’s, Stockett allows herself to do the same – only to acknowledge the hard issues, but not question them or dig deeper into them. She spends the entire book keeping Miss Skeeter busy with so many things, she doesn’t allow Skeeter to ask the questions she would have asked as an educated and thoughtful person. How do I fit into this book? What role do I play? What role should I play? How do I handle the issue of white power in the writing process? Miss Skeeter doesn’t ask these questions, which perhaps she wouldn’t have asked in the 60’s, although Ms. Stockett should be asking them in her book and the way she frames her story. Instead, she acknowledges the issue without discussion. Only in 1 page of the entire story, does she allow the narrative to get sticky: “ ‘Look at you. Another white lady trying to make a dollar off of colored people…. You think anybody’s ever going to read this thing?’ …She spoke evenly and with care, like a white person. I don’t know why, but that made it worse….’Say it, lady, say the word you think every time one of us comes in the door. Nigger.’” (258-259) And as quickly as it comes, it goes. The lady who said these things is quickly shooed out of Abilene’s house, and again we are left with something that is just a little too happy to feel right. This is the biggest disappointment of the book.

2022-11-14 14:14