I asked for The Help for my birthday back in March after hearing great things about it.  Although at the time I had absolutely no idea what it was about.  Only that it was a really awesome read.

There were other books on my To Read pile ahead of this, so it just kept getting put off.  And in that time, I heard what it was about, was invited to (and declined) a spot at the movie premier in San Diego (I do NOT see movies before I read the book.) and heard even MORE hype.

All of this lead to me not really wanting to read the book anymore.  I don’t like hype.  It makes me all doubtful that the book will have any real merit.  Don’t ask me why.  I’ve been called a book snob, and maybe that’s it.  Or maybe Oprah has ruined me for all books that get too much publicity (although, in her defense, her early choices for her Book Club were rather wonderful).

Anyway, I went into The Help all cautiously cynical.

And I hated it.  At first.

The first quarter of the book was really quite a struggle for me.  No one told me that.  What I was told was, “this book is SUCH a quick read and SO good and you will NEVER want to put it down.”

Oh I put it down alright.  A million times in those first hundred pages.  I bet it took me two weeks to actually get through the first part because I really didn’t look forward to reading.

Plus I had it in my mind that a white woman writing from a black point of view about something like civil rights was going to be horrible.

Again, maybe I am a snob, I don’t know.  Maybe I have read too much Hurston and Morrison.  Maybe I am still resting on all the discussions I had in my African American Lit classes about the complexity of racism.

Whatever it was, I was sure a book that was soooo loved and that had soooo quickly become a blockbuster movie could not really portray anything correctly or be worth my time.

I don’t think I was completely correct on that judgment.

The book was a good read.

Once Miss Skeeter, the white protagonist, began putting the stories of the black women together and Minnie and Aibileen, the black protagonists, began to detail the layers of bad and good and evil and wonderful about their lives as maids for rich white families, my reading took off.

The quick summary of the plot–if you’ve been under a rock or avoiding any sort of the Help publicity whatsoever–is that it takes place in the 60′s in Jackson, Mississippi.  Miss Skeeter, a wealthy white 20-something wannabe writer decides that she doesn’t understand all these unspoken rules of what keeps blacks and whites apart, and after talking with Aibileen pitching an idea to a New York publisher, decides to write a book of a collection of stories from various maids from Jackson.

Whew.

From what I’ve heard, the book does a better job than the movie in making sure the reader is aware of how horribly dangerous it is for these women to be not just talking to each other about what really goes on, but for whites and blacks to be friendly and casual with each other.

I also think it’s a good start to showing how complex racism is.  There are so many levels.  I found myself wondering over and over, “why is it such a BIG DEAL that if a white woman treats her black maid nicely?  Shouldn’t that just be expected and anything under that be abominable?”

But that is the point.  Racism is so tricky that it makes actual positive human interaction look like a standout miracle instead of just normal.  A white woman helping out her black maid when a family member is sick should be NORMAL, but it’s not, so it’s talked up as being the most wonderful thing ever.

This is confusing and sad to me.  I think most people–especially those who are as removed from the civil rights struggles of the south in the 60′s–think of racism as white people simply hating black people.

But it’s not that, excuse the pun, black and white.

Racism has ugly, tricky, mind-warping grays.

And I think The Help is a way to start looking at it.

Do I think the issue is much deeper than a good novel?  Yes.  But at least it made me think about it an write this post.

The lines I picked out as being the root of why Stockett wrote the book (and then was delighted to see she confirmed in the afterward) were these:

We are just two people.  Not that much separates us.  Not nearly as much as I’d thought.

Part of that is a “duh” statement.

But that is the black and white of it.  It’s the most simplistic way to put it.

Too simplistic?  Maybe.  But isn’t this what we want our kids to understand?  Differences are just that.  Differences.

What did you think?  I am assuming I am the last person on Earth to read the book, so tell me…your thoughts?