Berkley Books, 2011. 544 pp. Paperback $18.64; Ebook $9.95. bookshop.org
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help explores the effect of racism on women during the Civil Rights Movement. Through the stories of these women, we see first-hand the indignities suffered by Black women, their grace and patience, and their unique feminine strength. These women show resilience and creativity in the face of blatant attacks on their personhood. The result is a lesson on the poignant power of claiming your right to dignity as a person.
The novel focuses on three people: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are maids for affluent white families. These women see and experience the worst of their employers’ actions and the prejudices they hold.
While reviling the cankering evil embedded in their work lives, they still create safe spaces for vulnerable people in their lives. And in Aibileen’s case, her thwarted maternity overflows to the toddler daughter of her employer, which enriches her present… and causes her sorrow as she looks ahead to this child’s future in a prejudice-riddled world.
Minny, fiercer and more outspoken than her friend Aibileen, finds herself in an unusual job where her employer, Celia, views her as a friend and even a mentor rather than as a lowly maid. Celia comes from a poor family and cannot cook. Initially suspicious and reluctant, Minny and Celia forge a bond that rises above every stereotype that was supposed to define them both.
“Skeeter” connects all their stories. She is a white writer who prefers her nickname to Eugenia, her given name. She first consults Aibileen for help in writing a household column for the local paper. Skeeter then discovers the struggles of the Black maids in her hometown, a far more powerful narrative. This draws her step by step into their hurts and challenges….and her own. Eventually, she questions what happened to her family’s own maid, the source of Skeeter’s self-esteem.
The novel reveals painful, ludicrous examples of prejudice, homegrown wisdom and wit, shocking violence, and quiet yet overpowering love that outlasts everything else. No one’s story ends with a pretty bow, but each ends in hope.
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Volume Three of My Secret is Mine newsletter includes essays and discussions on Mulieris Dignitatem, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, an apostolic letter written by St. John Paul the Great in 1988.
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