Musings

I just finished The Help. This is from the author's afterword:

'What I am sure about is this: I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don’t think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.

In The Help there is one line that I truly prize: Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.'

Most of the fiction I read is either mystery or sci-fi/fantasy--in other words, genre fiction, most of which doesn't really get you to think about life, about how people relate with one another, about your own feelings and prejudices.

This one made me consider all those things. It was like eating a fine steak after settling for cotton candy for so long. It wasn't full of gristle--it's not a particularly dark book, not shocking, and indeed, it is hopeful for the change that was coming, but from the moment you start reading, the characters unfold and develop, and you definitely start siding with the protagonists, white and black. Parts pained me, or even made me cry, especially those where black people were called epithets or made to do demeaning things because of prejudice. There's a lot of loss expressed through several characters' stories as well. And there is a universal desire for the antagonist to really get her comeuppance that not only unifies the protagonists but the readers as well.

I read one essay about the movie that called it a 'hackneyed story'. Granted, that was about the film, which I haven't seen. But the book has substance, and I wouldn't consider it that at all. The essay was mostly not so much about the movie as about the essay's author, who obviously doesn't give white viewers the credit to feel pain at racial violence, etc. Funny, I had the same reaction she had to the same parts of the story. And, gee, I did so even though I'm white. Maybe she missed the point, that we're not so different after all.

Anyway, I'm glad I read the book. I'd like to see the movie as well, although I probably won't be able to for a couple of weeks. I hope it's still running in the theatres then. :)