Prejudice and perspective
Before I forget, I must tell you that, after my post last week, I’ve had some lovely correspondence with Mr Stuck-in-a-Book, and this weekend (15 January if you want to check it out) he posted his ‘official’ response to my reply to his critique. A very gracious one it was too. And indeed, our whole exchange of thoughts has been a most delightful and unusual experience; critics so rarely engage with authors directly.
Perspectives, points of view, personal experiences – we don’t stop often enough to appreciate those of others, do we? I think the world would be a kinder place if we did.
Which brings me to my book of the week. We’re so accustomed to the freedoms of a twenty-first century multicultural Britain, that it’s hard for us to enter a world where blacks and whites are divided by huge barriers; where discrimination is the order of the day; where unspeakably dreadful things happen to those who infringe the rules governing segregation.
‘No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em. First thing a white lady do is fire you … then a week after you lost your job, you get this little yellow envelope stuck to your screen door. Paper inside say NOTICE OF EVICTION … If you got a note on your car, they gone repossess it. If you got a parking ticket you ain’t paid, you going to jail …’
But the author Kathryn Stockett grew up in the 60s in the care of a black maid. She wished that she’d been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi working for a white family. But Demetrie died when Kathryn was sixteen; she could only imagine the answer. The Help is her own response to that wondering.
It’s an incredibly moving and challenging read, full of humour as well as shocking injustice. And I found it hard to put down.
The backdrop is Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s – the assassination of President Kennedy, the rallying cry of Martin Luther King Jr. Everywhere there is incongruity, perhaps nowhere more stark than in the domestic world. It’s the norm for white mothers to hire black women to care for their children, to teach them good behaviour and instill sound morals. And yet, these ‘helps’ are not allowed to sit at the same table, use the same toilet, or share the same libraries. Capricious dominance, seething unrest, fearful retribution abound.
Three compelling women tell the story.
Aibileen, is taking care of her seventeenth white child, Mae Mobley Leefolt. Her own only son Treelore has recently been run over by a tractor trailer and killed at the age of twenty-four while working on a wet loading dock, but there is no latitude given for personal grieving. Aibileen has the wisdom of ages, the courage of a pioneer, and a wonderfully distinctive voice.
‘I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality, but Miss Leefolt don’t do like that.’
Minny, is a clever woman, a brilliant cook who struggles to teach her empty-headed employer, Celia Rae Foote, the elements of good housekeeping. Her own domestic life is turbulent but her Mama has drummed the rules into her. Seven of them.
Rule Number One. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems.
Rule Number Two. Don’t you ever let that White Lady find you sitting on her toilet.
Rule Number Three. When you’re cooking white people’s food, you taste it with a different spoon.
Rule Number Four. You use the same cup, same fork, same plate every day and you keep it in a separate cupboard.
Rule Number Five. You eat in the kitchen.
Rule Number Six. You don’t hit on her children.
Rule Number Seven. No sass-mouthing.
Only Miss Celia doesn’t know these rules. She’s fighting her own boundaries. And Minny’s temperament isn’t suited to a life of subservience. Her patience is sorely tried by ‘the Fool’. Her unruly tongue has already cost her several jobs, and the shadow of the ‘Terrible Awful’ haunts her daily. As a character she’s less lovable than Aibileen, but her voice too is unforgettable.
‘I ironed everything short a the wrinkles on my face.’
‘I saw the way my mama acted when Miss Woodra brought her home, all Yes Ma’aming, No Ma’aming, I sure do thank you Ma’aming. Why I got to be like that? I know how to stand up to people.‘
Miss Skeeter is five feet eleven, plain and a rebel white woman. Her ambition is to write, but what about? Somehow ‘hints and tips on domestic cleaning’ doesn’t hit the spot. The daring plan she conceives leads both her and the two maids into serious trouble. And brings astonishing revelations.
‘Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realise, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I thought.’
Each is in search of a truth. Now they are bound together in a most irregular way. No one would believe they were friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But what a powerful story they have to tell.
This is a captivating read, funny, appalling and intensely moving. What a fabulous book for my first one of 2011.
Mixed reviews Do I want … or do I need?
I have just ordered this book and now can’t wait for it to drop through the letterbox !