Book Review: The Help

Book: The Help by Katheryn Stockett

Date finished: 7/4/11

Review: At some point last fall, my “lunch bunch” decided we all needed to read a book together. The book? The Help. The suggestor? Me. And because no one ever really set a date, the whole book club thing didn’t happen, but we did all read the book—with me bringing up the rear.

The Help is about African American maids working in the homes of white women in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s. The story is told by three narrators: Miss Skeeter, a young white woman who has recently graduated from Ole Miss yearning to tell a story that matters; Aibileen, a black maid who counts the white children she has mothered as her own; and Minny, another maid who is known for her sharp tongue. These three form an unlikely friendship of sorts in the 1960s South, and it’s a friendship that costs them all, especially when Skeeter and Aibileen team up to tell the stories of the African American maids and subvert the way things have always been.

This novel was the author’s first, and I think she should be immensely proud of the work, which became a bestseller. I started reading the book and couldn’t put it down, even staying up late at night to finish a few more chapters a couple of times. I wanted to know what was going to happen and I was completely lost in the story Stockett weaved around me. The culture, the maids, the experience of the South—that was all extremely foreign to me. There were parts of this book that shocked me because I truly did not grow up in the South and the concept of having a maid was foreign to my Midwest farmer’s daughter mind-set.

But because of that, this novel helped me to see the Civil Rights movement in a new way. It made it more personal, less a dark period in our American history and more something that happened to real people. Because I knew that segregation was bad, but I don’t think I fully realized how deeply the prejudices and false beliefs about people who simply have darker skin than others went. As I read this story of Jackson, Mississippi, on the cusp of change, I read the arguments people presented for why blacks and whites needed separate bathrooms. I began to realize the lack of power African Americans truly had, especially these maids, who could lose a job (and be blackballed from all society) if a powerful white woman spoke out against her.

The Help is a powerful book and a good read. You’ll learn a little about yourself and maybe even begin to see those people you’ve marked as “OTHER” in your life in a slightly different light. So get a copy and get lost in the story. You won’t be sorry!