The Help by Kathryn Stockett

So, it's been forever since I've written, but I'm going to try again. I won't try to go back and do all the books I've read since my last post, but I'll do a couple anyway.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a very good book I read for a couple of my book clubs. It's set in Mississippi (how fun is it to write that, thinking "M-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-humpback-humpback-i"?) right at the beginning of the civil rights movement. Three women are the "voices" in the book. One is a young white woman who wants to be a writer and decides to write the stories of the black women in the town. The other two are two of the black women.

I was afraid it'd be more of that Southern women's book kind of stuff but it really wasn't. The women's voices seemed genuine, and it felt like you kind of got in their heads. The women served as maids/housekeepers and also nannys. There was definitely a comment on the way that these women were trusted so implicitly with such an important task as raising the family's children, yet they were not allowed, in some cases, to use the same bathroom facilities. And then those children grew up to have servants of their own.

I recommend it.