2020 retrospective reflection on this post: During the 2020 racial protests following the murder by police of George Floyd in Minnesota, I learned that The Help is not seen as a particularly helpful anti-racist novel (could be why Oprah didn’t pick it for her book club). I learned that Viola Davis regretted playing the role of a maid and caregiver and that current opinion is that the book really did not give voice to the oppression of its black domestic-worker characters. And, of course, its author is also white. The premise of this post was that “the book is as much about the cathartic effect of storytelling as it is about race.” The post is still valid from that perspective. But at some point, I will revisit this book I enjoyed so much in 2009 and see how I feel about the 2020 complaints.
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I was listening to the novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, the other day when I felt an overwhelming hunch that this book would be Oprah’s next book-club selection.
Oprah announces her next book tomorrow, so we’ll see if I’m right. Although I consider myself very intuitive, many of my hunches have been wrong. I was absolutely, 100 percent sure, for example, that Al Gore would win the 2000 election. I did see over on the Oprah site that a few others are hoping and intuiting that The Help will be the selection.
I first encountered The Help through my Audible.com book club. The audio version is said to be the mostly highly rated (by listeners) book in Audible’s collection. I can see why; the book is told in the voices of three female characters, and the Audible version uses a different reader for each part, making the book almost more like a movie or play than a book. (Actually, there are four readers for the book. I have not finished the book, so I don’t know what role the fourth reader plays.)
Despite the strong reviews, I wasn’t totally sold on the book until my friend Craig DeLarge noted on Facebook that he has absolutely riveted by it (also the audio version).
Extremely timely in light of the current vitriol about racism, The Help is Stockett’s first novel and is set in the deep South in the early 1960s. It’s all about what happens when a young white woman begins to gather the stories of black maids and the way the maids are treated by their white employers.
What struck me immediately was that the book is as much about the cathartic effect of storytelling as it is about race.
Telling stories about raising and loving white babies while being mistreated by their mothers is as transformative for the maids who tell the stories as it is for “Miss Skeeter,” the aspiring journalist who records them.
“I don’t want anybody to know how much I need those Skeeter stories,” says sassy maid Minny. “… I am not saying the Miss Skeeter meetings are fun. Every time we meet, I complain. I moan. I get mad and throw a hot potato fit. But here’s the thing: I like telling my stories. It feels like I’m doing something about it. When I leave, the concrete in my chest has loosened, melted down so I can breathe for a few days.”
At first, the maids fear telling their stories. But as despicable violence is perpetrated against blacks in their Jackson, MS, community, they become more willing to step forward and tell their tales. The murder of Medgar Evers particularly galvanizes the maids to become storytellers.
We are “doing something about it” when we get stories of injustice off our chests, especially when we educate those who have been living in the bliss of ignorance.
I don’t yet know whether storytelling will precipitate real change in The Help. I can’t wait to find out. Nor can I wait to find out if my hunch is right about Oprah’s book-club selection.