The Help ~ Kathryn Stockett

The Help is set in Jackson Mississippi from 1962 to 1964. It is told from the perspective of three women. Aibileen, is a black maid who has a special gift for working with other people’s children. Every day she tries to make Mae Mobley, the little girl in her care, feel loved and important. It hurts Aibileen to see the way Mae Mobley’s mother treats her as a burden and a nuisance. She feels sometimes that no matter what she does, Mae Mobley will turn out like her mother.

Then there’s Miss Skeeter. Skeeter is a young white woman who has just graduated from college. She and her friends are officers in the Junior League. They hang out at the local country club and host bridge parties every week. When Skeeter returns home she discovers Constantine, the black maid who raised her, has disappeared, and no one will tell her what happened, least of all her mother. The loss of Constantine makes Skeeter more aware of the people her friends refer to as “the help”. Her eyes begin to open to the injustices that the black maids in town put up with every day. She wonders if they ever wished that things could change.

The final narrator is Minny, Aibileen’s best friend. Minny is a smart-mouthed, black maid who has a habit of getting fired for speaking her mind. She butts heads with one of Skeeter’s best friends, Hilly Holbrook, the president of the Junior League. Miss Hilly does her best to make sure Minny will never be hired as a maid again. Minny finds a job, albeit a strange one. She must work in secret every day for “white trash turned rich girl” Miss Celia, so that Miss Celia’s husband will believe that she is a good housekeeper. Minny thinks Miss Celia is crazy, but she takes the job because it’s the only one she can get.

The characters' lives begin to intertwine when Skeeter, an aspiring journalist, decides to write about the lives of black maids in Jackson, Mississippi. Her search for the truth leads her to Aibileen and Minny. The trouble is, some people in Jackson don’t want the truth to get out. Those people don’t want things to change, and they will go to drastic measure to make sure “the help” stays in their place.

I love finding a book that I can’t put down! This book has such an array of memorable characters. I really enjoyed reading about how each of their lives intertwined with the others’. I also really liked that there were three narrators. I think it added a sense of mystery to the book. One character would begin telling of an event, and it wasn’t until later, in another character’s story that you discovered the outcome of that event. The author really embodied each character. I felt as if I was reading three separate memoirs.

I also love books that make me think about them long after I’m done reading them. Desegregation of the south is not a topic I’m unfamiliar with, but this was a new perspective on the topic for me. I knew that many people were against desegregation and that terrible things were done to people who were black in the south in the early 1960’s. But I’ve never stopped to think about how dangerous it was for anyone, even a white person, to speak out in favor of desegregation. There were “normal,” seemingly nice people who were dead set against black people having equal rights. It’s pretty hard for me to imagine someone who believed in segregation speaking out about it just like they were discussing the weather. It’s even more incredible to me that those people could have felt no shame or guilt. My eyes have been opened to the fact that, in some parts of the south, it wasn’t just a few radical groups like the KKK that treated black people as if they were something less than human. This book helped me feel as if I lived during that time for a brief period. Thankfully, when I was done reading, it was 2010, and though we have a long way to go until there are equal rights for all people, we sure have come a long way.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys great, character-driven fiction, especially historical fiction. I got this book from the library, but I loved it so much that I will be looking for a copy to buy so that I can pass it along to my friends and family!