The Help by Kathryn Stockett (2009 fiction)
This is an unforgettable story, the record of a Southern township’s loosely knit community of black house servants’ experiences in white families.They cooked family meals, cleaned every item and corner, and mothered the children until they reached preschool age. The times were the 1960’s, the burgeoning of civil rights. The story is told by the nannies, organized by Eugenia Phelan, a highly intelligent but socially inadequate and unprepossessing white girl. Their charges bonded with the nannies. The white wives and mothers lived socially pretentious lives, and their attitude toward the nannies is best illustrated by the Home Help Sanitation Initiative: “Every household has to provide separate toilet facilities in the garage or shed for the help, as a disease preventative measure.” The story is a thriller. Eugenia, Miss Skeeter, makes contact with the New York Times and is encouraged to write. She slowly makes contact with the nannies, and transcribes their stories, not all bad, all identifying names changed. Their book is published, written by Anonymous. The town is reading and recognizing itself. I invite you to read and relish the delicious denouement.
Reviewed by Martin Waldron
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