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The helpShelf life: Looking at secular booksTHE HELP The black maid from the Southern US States seems a bit of a stereotype. From Gone with the Wind to Tom and Jerry, she is hardworking, plain speaking, loyal and overweight. Kathryn Stockett, a white writer, has written this well-plotted and entertaining story The Help about the reality behind this stereotype and the culture of the deep South. The story is narrated in three voices: Abileen, Minny and Skeeter (risky to take on the voice of a black maid if you are a 30-something blonde southerner!). Skeeter is a college girl, trying to find her place in the stuffy society of early 1960s Jackson, Missisipi. She is tall, single and awkward, with an ambition to write that leaves her outside the normal bridge parties and benefits of her racially bigoted contemporaries. The only experience she can find is writing the household hints column of the local newspaper, which leads her to Abileen and then to Minny. A writing project bigger than cleaning tips emerges; Skeeter decides to record the reflections of 12 ‘coloured’ maids. And so Stockett’s book cleverly interweaves the stories of maids; full of hardships, injustice, loyalty and prejudice, with a tale about the dangerous production of the book. The cruelties and shibboleths of the closeted white community are exposed against the background of the growing civil rights movement. In contrast to the white families, black society is seen to be supportive and open. While the whites arrange auctions to raise money for The-Poor-Starving-Children-In-Africa, but ignore the need on their doorsteps, the black maids give away their earnings to care for each other’s children. The church is seen to be at the heart of this; it is a support group, but also a spiritual body. Abileen is a praying lady, and it is her faith which makes her the central figure of the book. It is she, not Skeeter, who determines the outcome of the writing project, and it is she to whom the other characters turn for advice and support. The danger of this, again, is the racist stereotype current today: church is a spiritual place for black people, all gospel songs and loud amens, but an irrelevance to the lives of more sophisticated white people. Despite this caveat, do read this book — it is a good read which will entertain, and encourage you to think about oppression and the church’s need to respond. Sarah Allen© Evangelicals Now - December 2009 |