Sunday, February 12, 2012

The Help by Kathryn Stockett






Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.


Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

http://www.kathrynstockett.com/stockett-synopsis.htm

Read this book. It really helped me imagine just how horrible it must have been to live in those times when African-Americans never got a break from racial oppression. I can't imagine having lived in those times -- it makes no sense to me why they should be treated as if they're animals just because their skin isn't white. There's a reason I didn't live back then.

This book really touched me -- yes, it made me cry. I also recommend that you watch the movie, because both the book and the movie are amazing. The movie made me cry as well.


The movie is at redbox and probably on Netflix too for all you movie lovers out there. So go read the book and then watch the movie! You're in for an incredible journey.

--Sadie

Rating: 5/5 stars

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