June 12, 2009

• The Help

  Skeeter, the main character/narrator of The Help, currently on the NYTimes Bestseller list for Hardcover Fiction, is older than I am.  She had finished college by the early 1960s and I was just 3-5 yrs old.  I guess that accounts for the difference in perspectives on race relations and segregation in the South.

  

  We had help in my family, too.  Six children born in six and one half years warrants help.  And, I remember them all so well – Nina, Mary Frances, Catherine, and Delores.  Mary Frances stands out the most because she was my Abilene, the *mammy* for one of the families featured in this touching characterization of the intertwined lives of Mississippi blacks and whites.

  Author Kathryn Stockett currently lives in my home town of Atlanta and leaves the reader with much to contemplate.  I especially appreciate her afterward in which she quoted Howell Raines’s Pulitzer Prize-winning article, “Grady’s Gift“:

  There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation.

  Some parts of the story are very trite, overly dramatic, and despicable.  I dog-eared the book hoping to remember lots of things to talk about in my review.  The whites are not ones with whom I would have ever circulated.  The maids tend to have more admirable characteristics.  However, I deplore the fact that race relations drives the story because I think these types of situations continue to exist throughout the world, despite the US Civil Rights movement and legislation to combat discrimination. 

  Allow me to leave you with The Rules;  that is, the seven cardinal commands for working as a maid, taught to 14 yr old Minny by her mother before she sent her out to her first family.

  1)  Keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems.
  2)  Dont ever let your White Lady catch you sitting on her toilet.
  3)  Use a different spoon for tasting when cooking for your White Family.
  4)  Keep your utensils and dinner plate in a separate cupboard.
  5)  Eat in the kitchen (not at the same table as your White Family.) 
  6)  Dont spank your White Lady’s children.
  7)  No sass-mouthing.

  FWIW – Those didnt apply in our home.

   

  Addendum:

  It is interesting to note that the first black performer to win an Academy Award was Hattie McDaniel, for her role as *Mammy* in the 1939 film, Gone With The Wind.  She’s my favorite character in that movie.  Hattie would have been 114 years old this past Wednesday, June 10th.

  This book, Mammy:  A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory, sounds interesting.

  Added 6/3/2010: Walter William’s fine article explanation of *discrimination* and how the Civil Rights Act may not have accomplished justice.

  http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/10/TheRightToDiscriminate.htm

   

   

   

  • 10:12 am
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