The Help

Forgot to write my thoughts on The Help. Had been curious about it, not sure if I read it just because I wanted to know more about it before the movie came out.
The novel is easy enough to read. Main conceit is that young girl just graduated college, goes back home to Jackson, MS still single and with ambitions of becoming a writer. While living her life she decides to write a book about "The Help" from their perspective. When the tell-all within the novel is published, all hell breaks loose.

On first look, one can make the mistake to think that the novel is about the group of black women that worked as maids during the height of the civil rights movement - their feelings, examples of what they had to go through as they continued to work for, and raise babies that were white - the same people that were holding their rights away from them. But the book is written by a white woman, herself "raised" by a black maid in Jackson, MS during the end of the civil rights movement and wether we like it or not, the reader's experience of the book is tainted by this knowledge. A friend who also read the novel told me that the maids were stereotypes, that you had your angry black woman, your wise and motherly black woman, the one that kept giving to their white folks because they loved them so much. Part of me feels that these stereotypes are there because the reader will decide to find them.

Let me explain: the book is narrated by three women - two maids and the young lady that we talked about before. (I'm sorry, I don't remember names and I'm too lazy to look them up.) So we've got the young lady, who doesn't really fit in. For one, she actually finished college instead of just going there to find herself a husband. Two, she is interested in leaving Jackson - she is not what one would consider super attractive, is awkward with guys, and can't seem to mold to what society tells her a woman her age should be doing, what her friends are doing. Then there's Wise Maid, who just lost her son to racism, a son who was studious and smart and had the hopes of becoming a writer. Wise Maid has spent her lifetime raising other people's babies - white babies to be specific. White babies that love her and call HER momma until they learn that Wise Maid is black and thus not worthy of love. Wise Maid tends to change houses when the kids get to that point. Angry Maid has every reason in the world to be angry: her husband beats her, drinks their money away sometimes, and has been working for white folks since she's 14 years old. And she's been big mouthed since birth.

Okay, I don't want to give the whole book away, but here's the thing: a woman whose son just died and is able to raise up and continue working is strong if she's white, wise if she's black. Similarly, Angry Maid and Young Lady are very similar - both speak their mind and go against the norm. But Angry Maid is black and thus she's an angry black woman. Young Lady is white and so she's opinionated. We see what we want to see. Personally, I don't think the characters are stereotypical - each one of them is nuanced, and they have reasons to be the way they are.

However, I think people are missing the forrest for the trees. The Help is not about the Maids at all. After all, I don't know if that's what the Maids (employees) would call themselves. The Help is about white guilt at a time when the phrase was knew. The Help is about a woman suddenly realizing the injustice going around her, and how she went about to fight it - with the help of two black woman. Though we were able to see inside their minds, the novel always was about the Young Lady. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - in the contrary, it's a needed point-of-view, and I think the author went about the right way. I think that the point of view of the person that learned to no longer be racist by being loved and being around the people that were being mistreated is important and deserves to be heard. Not in the "wow, they're heroes!" way, but rather in the "things are possible with love." It doesn't make Young Lady a trivial character. But that the author gave the other two women a voice, balanced that story so that it isn't about White Guilt, but rather a picture, and we get to look at the action from different houses. It's great. It's about these two women that refuse to no longer be invisible and about these young woman that realizes that there are people around here, that they are not invisible and shouldn't be treated as such. There is change in this novel, there is hope and voice in this novel.

I enjoyed the read, and I'm looking forward to the movie ( though that has more to do with Viola Davis than anything else) and wonder how they'll handle it - wether they'll try to make either of the parts bigger (be it the Maids or the Young Lady) in order to make it more "relatable." In the meantime, I recommend you read the book, if only because Stockett has a good, funny, writing voice, that makes time fly.