HELP
11:13 PM
No
novel inspires me more than the New York
Times bestseller The Help by
Kathryn Stockett. It inspires me to fight, to write, to change the world.
Considering that the extreme horrors of racial segregation are behind us, a
passion to fight and write for has
yet to grab my attention. But something inside tells me it will one day present
itself. Perhaps my passions will align with Stockett focusing on the rights to
which every individual is entitled. Perhaps they will lean toward education or
more political matters. Whichever it is, I dream of writing a novel as novel as
the one sitting by my side at this very moment.
The Help is daring. Though over fifty years have come and gone
since the decade this book was set, Stockett digs into America’s deepest and
darkest closets housing the concrete walls of the racial prejudice of the
southern ‘60s. Not without caution did she approach this subject. Stockett
describes it as a “slippery issue (she had) been struggling with and couldn’t
catch in (her) hands, like a wet fish.” Stockett praised the Pulitzer
Prize–winning article “Grady’s Gift” by Howell Raines for summing it up in a
few simple sentences:
“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. For
the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect,
makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest
feeling or pity or pragmatism.”
Reflecting on her work, Stockett is pulled in
two directions – the fear of having told too much and the fear of having told
too little. As a child growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, she was taught that
speaking of “such uncomfortable things…was tacky (and) impolite.” However, she
felt there was much more to be told on both positive and negative ends of the
spectrum. For some help, conditions were far worse. Unimaginable, even. But others
experienced deeper love than Stockett had the “time or ink to portray.”
How I wish I could tie these two up with a bow and beg
her for more! Why? Because, The Help
is captivating with characters so rich you could eat them up like a slice of Minny
Jackson’s chocolate pie. Well, not Miss a-Hilly’s own special pie. You steer
clear of that one now, you hear! Stockett masterfully layers the chapters between
the story’s three main characters –Aibileen, Minny, and Miss Skeeter. The
reader has a unique opportunity to climb inside the heads of these two black
maids and a white twenty-something’s whose fingers itch to write change into
Jackson, Mississippi. Minny and Miss Skeeter play major roles in the story, but
it’s Aibileen with whom we begin and end.
“‘All the babies I tend to I count as my own,’” she
says to Mae Mobley – her seventeenth child. Aibileen Clark loves her Baby Girl when
her own mama only picks her up once or twice a day. Then it is to reprimand her
or get her chubby fingers off the windows. After watching some of her earlier babies
grow up, Aibileen resolves to teach her special baby that she is kind, smart, and important despite
whatever her mama says or does. As the novel progresses and civil rights
becomes a more prominent theme, she also shares Secret Stories with Mae Mobley about
someone named Martian Luther King who people hated because he was green.
Equality is a subject that is close
to Aibileen’s heart. The Help opens
not three years after the death of her twenty-four year old son – a death mocked
by white men in their lack of empathy. While working at a lumber yard, Treelore
got caught under the wheels of a truck crushing his lungs. White men dumped him on the sidewalk outside
of the black hospital and honked the horn as they drove away. People have shown
more compassion for a kitten with a broken toe. After that day, a bitter seed
took root inside of Aibileen. But bitter as it was, a seed is a seed. And a
seed can yield fruit.
Minny Jackson debuts like a tornado of Crisco with a
heaping spoonful of sass. One Terrible Awful thing she did gets her out of a
job just as the story dawns. With a houseful of kids and a drunk, abusive
husband, her friendship with Aibileen is what gets her through these trying
times. Her job search is choked by the victim of the Terrible Awful and none
other than the queen of Jackson herself: Miss Hilly Holbrook. If Miss Hilly
says Minny Jackson is a liar and a thief, then all of Mississippi believes that
Minny Jackson is a liar and a thief –all except one corner of Madison County.
Miss Celia Rae Foote went and married Miss Hilly’s ex-boyfriend and therefore
has no friends, no connections, no nothing. Just an enormous white mansion that
needs dusting, polishing, edible food in the pantry, and those floor-to-ceiling
windows washed. She wants Minny for the job. But there’s a catch; there’s always a catch. And she’s just going to
have to sleep with one eye open.
Though nobody should be more on their guard than Miss Eugenia
Phelan. An Ole Miss graduate with a double major in English and journalism,
Skeeter is hungry to break her way into the writer’s world, but she is
splashing in puddles nobody has ever dared to poke their toe in.
Every person has a lens, a filter, through which they
view the world. In Jackson, Mississippi, all anyone sees is black and white. But
Miss Skeeter sees color. She sees people drowning in a pool of racial
discrimination while others strut by sipping their Cola. Challenged by her superior to “write about
what disturbs (her), particularly if it bothers no one else,” Skeeter sees this
as an open door to write from the point of view
of the help.
And write she does. Skeeter’s ambition, Aibileen’s
passion, and Minny’s expression come together to produce Help by Anonymous. Boasting
a white dove of peace on its cover, two hundred and sixty-seven pages pile together
in a controversial bestseller telling stories ripe with laughter, tears, love,
and pain. Life in Jackson will never be the same again. And neither will the perspective
of Stockett’s readers.
Why? Because The
Help is convicting. Many of its readers identify with either side of the spectrum
– the victim or the oppressor. A full generation stands in between myself and
that of which the story relates. My conscience is burdened by the injustice and
suffering endured by the black population, but in my reflection, I feel no personal
responsibility for what they suffered. I have
spoken to several members of the white, in-between generation about this book
and have found they share a similar response to it: guilt. Guilt for even being white. But even this
mindset, this guilt, can be settled by what is The Help’s most prized quote: “We are just two people. Not that
much separates us. Not nearly as much as I thought.”
Putting
aside all of the depth and heavy truth integrated into the story, The Help is beautiful. Relationships are
built like bridges bringing together different classes, ages, and races. How
unlikely is the friendship between solid, sassy, no-nonsense Minny Jackson and
flighty, flashy, naïve Miss Celia? Yet, out of every relationship developed,
theirs is the most endearing. The story’s sole consistent friendship exists
between Minny and Aibileen. They journey the story laughing and crying on one
another’s shoulder swearing to stand by each other until the end whatever that
end may be. With a substantial amount of time and patience, Miss Skeeter and
Aibileen’s relationship conquers the highest peak of trust. The weight of their
confidence leaves their lives in each other’s hands. This is an incredible feat
to have been accomplished between people of differing color especially in the
segregated South.
All
others aside, 0ne relationship threads together and bookends The Help – that of Aibileen and Mae
Mobley. Stockett preaches racial equality from the rooftops the entire novel,
but it is this simple bond that speaks volumes above the others. Human nature
at its origin responds to love and kindness not skin color. When Mae Mobley
calls Aibileen her “real mama,” she is recognizing the one who holds her, feeds
her, and tells her stories as the one who loves her most. The natural instinct characterized
in this relationship is the heart of the fight against Jim Crow. We were created
equal. Nothing can change that.
Fifty
years later, with the bulk of racism behind us, what can we take away from this
beautiful story? Aibileen tells us in chapter twenty-four: “All I’m saying is,
kindness don’t have no boundaries.”
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