Book Review: The Help

     I read 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett, in seventh grade because I heard there was a movie that was coming out that was based off of the book and I generally like to read the book first before the movie. Now since I was in seventh grade when I read it, I did not know much about racism but I did know some knowledge about it. It really opened my eyes up to what it was like to be a black woman in the deep south (Jackson, Mississippi), it helped me with my understanding that yes there were people in the deep south who wanted to help the African American community.

     This book is amazing in so many ways and the first reason why I think it is amazing is because it is about a woman writing a book about how 'the help' are treated by the white women who hire them. This book that was written by a white woman, Skeeter, she went behind her own friends backs and befriended her friends 'help' that they hired, to interview them about what their lives are like and how they are treated by these white women. It was very hard in the beginning to find African American women who would risk their job and families to talk to Skeeter, to be able to spread the word to the country about what is really happening down there.


     Another thing that amazes me is that Skeeter, she grew up very privileged, because her family owned a very successful cotton farm, it was bound that Skeeter would grow up just like her mom and hire 'help'. The thing about being privileged though is that Skeeter grew up with many African American women who worked on the farm, but one in particular, Constantine was hired to raise Skeeter. Skeeter grew up and in her mind Constantine was more of a mother to her than her own mother was, so that is what really fueled Skeeter to write her book. Also she saw how poorly here white friends treated their help and knew that something had to change, it did not matter that she would be going behind their backs and getting the terrible details about what these women did.

Skeeter from the movie

     The book started by this woman Aibileen, and she was hired under one of Skeeter's good friends. Aibileen knew Skeeter was not like the white women who abuse their help, and that is one of the reasons why Aibileen was the first person to with some persuasion, be interviewed. Once Aibileen knew she could trust Skeeter, she got her close friend, Minny, to talk to Skeeter but Minny had a family of five children and her husband was very abusive, so it took a lot more persuasion because she did not want to risk losing her job and not being able feed her kids and then having to deal with her husband who would physically abuse her. After the two had agreed though, it became very hard to get their friends to talk to Skeeter, but after a terrible thing happened to their friend, that is when all of the women felt it was their duty to tell Skeeter of all of their stories.

Minny (left) Aibileen (right) from the movie

Kathryn Stockett

     In the end, the book was published by anonymous and it became a national best seller, meaning the whole country had read and heard about what awful things these white women did. Kathryn Stockett truly wrote an amazing book that opened your eyes to, not only do the men slave owners abuse the men slaves, but the women abuse their help as well. I recommend this book to any age and everyone because it really helped me understand what was going on back then, rather than learning about it in a class room.

**pictures provided by Google