The Help by Kathryn Stockett

INTRODUCTION

Told through the point of view of three different women living in Jackson, Mississippi,  The Help chronicles events from late summer of 1962 through 1964. Skeeter Phelan, who has just graduated from Ole Miss, returns home to the family plantation, ambitious to become a writer. Taking the advice of a New York editor to hone her skills, Skeeter begins to write a column for the local newspaper while searching for a topic that she truly cares about. Missing her beloved childhood family maid and confronted by the overt racism of her friend Hilly Holbrook’s campaign to require a separate bathroom for the black help, Skeeter proposes to write about the lives of the black maids in Jackson. Knowing she will need to interview black maids to tell their stories but without realizing the danger of what she is asking, Skeeter approaches Aibileen, the maid of one of her close friends. With an increasing sense of bitterness at the injustice of her situation, Aibileen agrees to help, and later recruits Minny and eventually other maids. As they work on this project to tell their true stories, including stories of the prejudice and injustice that the maids experience in their everyday lives, a close relationship develops between Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny. e three women come to confront and resist the intimidation experienced daily by the black maids. Woven throughout the stories are the key events of these seminal years of the civil rights movement. Dealing as it does with the social issues of the time, e Help may be controversial for students. It is through the agency of Skeeter Phelan, a white woman, that the black maids get to tell their stories and as such it continues the tradition of novels like To Kill a Mockingbird. ere is the issue of language; all the maids use a version of black dialect created by the author, although their southern white employers mainly use Standard English. Also, the focus on domestic injustices faced by the maids in the novel may come across as avoiding the real brutality faced by blacks during this time period in Mississippi. Teachers can help students confront these issues by posing some of the questions provided in this guide. After they have read the novel, students will have opportunities to evaluate the impact of the novel through suggested follow-up activities.

The Help – Novel

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