FROM ELLEN: I started Kathryn Stockett's novel "The Help" with some trepidation. Obama may be in the White House, but that hasn't wiped the slate clean of racism or classism, and "The Help" gets us right back to the roots -- the Jim Crow South. Set in the early '60s, as the issue of equal rights for black people clawed its way into the national consciousness, the book is told through the eyes of black domestics and a young white woman who decides to cross the color line (secretly) to tell their story.
The reason for my unease? It captures a dialect that could have come straight out of "Gone With the Wind," a novel that has been criticized for promoting black stereotypes like "sure 'nough" Mammy and the "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies" Prissy. Listen up:
"Taking care a white babes, that's what I do... Her legs is so spindly, she looks like she done growed em last week... I spec this is the smallest house I ever worked in..." You get the idea. Meanwhile, when the story is told from the point of view of the white woman, Skeeter, grammar and syntax are perfect.
And yet, what makes this book impossible to put down is the voices of these maids: Aibileen, Minny, and all the rest who at risk to themselves and their families tell the good and bad of cleaning white peoples' houses and raising their children. No wonder the book has been the #1 seller among Southern independent stores. Stockett, who was raised in Mississippi by a black maid like those she's created in this book, has captured these women as under-educated, yes, but also tough, shrewd, proud, compassionate and even funny. For them, humor helps them cope with the constant insults suffered under a system that kept them in their place, and how.
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