So in all this hubbub I call my life, in all of this complaining about stress, I forgot to tell you that it hasn't gotten so bad that I had to stop reading. I wouldn't do it, you know, stop reading. In fact, I've been reading better things since I'm getting better sleep with my slightly older puppy. Last week, it was almost as though the book I was reading was helping to get me through. Did you ever read a book like that? And for the first time in a very long time, I'm going to call a book 'important.'
'The Help,' by Kathryn Stockett is an important book. The last book I described as important was 'Fugitive Pieces,' by Anne Michaels, a Canadian poet. That was in 1996. They don't come through me that often. Oh, I've read some of the classics that I missed in college. Did I ever tell you that having Ian McKellen read 'The Illiad' and 'The Oddessy' to me on audio books was the nicest way to experience them. And yes, they were important books. How could something that has survived for that long not be important?
So if you're like me and it's taken you a while to catch on, 'The Help' is Stockett's first book, about black women raising white babies for white families in the civil rights era. There's already a movie! This book isn't just a history lesson. Stockett breathes life into her characters. I just wanted to slap the character, Miss Elizabeth, for her casual cruelties. Even the names fit. Can you imagine being saddled with a name like Skeeter for your whole life? I love what this author has done.
I was thrown by the language of the characters at first, but I'll admit that it rang clear in my mind once I read it as though I was listening. I even heard my own twang come back just a little bit like it does when I talk to my mom who still lives in the same house I where I grew up in Southern Indiana. Maybe being sleep-deprived from getting up with a puppy made me susceptible to the language, but that's good work, to pull out an old accent with just the written word.
What makes 'The Help' an important book is that I was struck by how stuck in the middle a person could get, trying to make things right. Black or white, it would have taken courage to do the right thing in such a heated environment. About eighteen years ago, I marched in a protest against a law passed in Seattle banning sitting on the sidewalk. It is a stupid law, one that has no purpose but to 'protect' storefronts from the unpleasantness of homelessness. I was appalled by the passing of that law so I marched with a couple hundred other people in protest against it. Yet I have to admit that never once, during that march, did I have the courage to actually sit down. I was afraid I might be arrested. I was afraid of what the police might do to me. That was nothing compared to what happened in the South in the '60s. Nothing.
While I was reading 'The Help,' I actually woke up in the middle of the night when the puppy whined to go out and was still afraid for some reason. It took me a minute to wake up enough to remember that the puppy only needed to go out and that my fear was just a residual from a compelling book. It's that good.
Some of the criticisms of Stockett's book rip into the accuracy of her portrayal of a domestic worker in the early 1960s. Ida E. Jones, the national director of the Association of Black Women Historians hated the book for its vernacular and for trivializing the problems of black domestic workers during that time. She said the book stereotyped both black women and men, ignored sexual harassment, and was degrading because of the language Stockett used to characterize the black women.
I am not a black woman, so what can I say to that? I didn't experience the deep South, nor do I remember much of that time period. What I can say is that this book struck a chord. I did feel the heat of unrestrained prejudice as a child. There were many reasons why I moved away from home after I graduated from college, but that was definitely one part of it. Hatred made life feel less safe, even for a pasty white-bread girl like me.
So I stick by my opinion. 'The Help' is an important book, even if, while you read it, you realize that the scenario may very well have been worse than it is portrayed. I think Stockett should be proud of her work, even in the face of that criticism.
Thank you for listening, jb
'The Help,' by Kathryn Stockett is an important book. The last book I described as important was 'Fugitive Pieces,' by Anne Michaels, a Canadian poet. That was in 1996. They don't come through me that often. Oh, I've read some of the classics that I missed in college. Did I ever tell you that having Ian McKellen read 'The Illiad' and 'The Oddessy' to me on audio books was the nicest way to experience them. And yes, they were important books. How could something that has survived for that long not be important?
So if you're like me and it's taken you a while to catch on, 'The Help' is Stockett's first book, about black women raising white babies for white families in the civil rights era. There's already a movie! This book isn't just a history lesson. Stockett breathes life into her characters. I just wanted to slap the character, Miss Elizabeth, for her casual cruelties. Even the names fit. Can you imagine being saddled with a name like Skeeter for your whole life? I love what this author has done.
I was thrown by the language of the characters at first, but I'll admit that it rang clear in my mind once I read it as though I was listening. I even heard my own twang come back just a little bit like it does when I talk to my mom who still lives in the same house I where I grew up in Southern Indiana. Maybe being sleep-deprived from getting up with a puppy made me susceptible to the language, but that's good work, to pull out an old accent with just the written word.
What makes 'The Help' an important book is that I was struck by how stuck in the middle a person could get, trying to make things right. Black or white, it would have taken courage to do the right thing in such a heated environment. About eighteen years ago, I marched in a protest against a law passed in Seattle banning sitting on the sidewalk. It is a stupid law, one that has no purpose but to 'protect' storefronts from the unpleasantness of homelessness. I was appalled by the passing of that law so I marched with a couple hundred other people in protest against it. Yet I have to admit that never once, during that march, did I have the courage to actually sit down. I was afraid I might be arrested. I was afraid of what the police might do to me. That was nothing compared to what happened in the South in the '60s. Nothing.
While I was reading 'The Help,' I actually woke up in the middle of the night when the puppy whined to go out and was still afraid for some reason. It took me a minute to wake up enough to remember that the puppy only needed to go out and that my fear was just a residual from a compelling book. It's that good.
Some of the criticisms of Stockett's book rip into the accuracy of her portrayal of a domestic worker in the early 1960s. Ida E. Jones, the national director of the Association of Black Women Historians hated the book for its vernacular and for trivializing the problems of black domestic workers during that time. She said the book stereotyped both black women and men, ignored sexual harassment, and was degrading because of the language Stockett used to characterize the black women.
I am not a black woman, so what can I say to that? I didn't experience the deep South, nor do I remember much of that time period. What I can say is that this book struck a chord. I did feel the heat of unrestrained prejudice as a child. There were many reasons why I moved away from home after I graduated from college, but that was definitely one part of it. Hatred made life feel less safe, even for a pasty white-bread girl like me.
So I stick by my opinion. 'The Help' is an important book, even if, while you read it, you realize that the scenario may very well have been worse than it is portrayed. I think Stockett should be proud of her work, even in the face of that criticism.
Thank you for listening, jb
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