DIOCESAN NEWS
04/02/10
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Author answers questions about `The Help’
By Fabvienen Taylor
      JACKSON — The question most asked of Kathryn Stockett, author of the New York Times best-selling novel “The Help,” is: “Are you Skeeter?”
      “That question really embarrasses me because I was never that gutsy. I never was that brave. I followed the way things were,” said Stockett during a visit last week to Jackson.
      “It wasn’t until I was about 30 years old that I really started wondering, 15 years after Demetrie (the family’s long-time maid) died, that I really started wondering about what in the world she must have been thinking and feeling, working for a family.
      “Or what she must have thought, felt and done in her spare time. I never wondered much about that. I couldn’t even tell you what she did on Sunday afternoons.
      “But if you would have asked me about her I would have said, ‘I loved her so much, she was a part of the family,’ that old cliche.”
Stockett spoke Tuesday, March 23, at the Millsaps Arts and Lecture series and Wednesday,       March 24, at APPLAUSE!, the Eudora Welty Library series, sponsored by Jackson Friends of the Library.
      Stockett was born and raised in Jackson. She earned a degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and then moved to New York City where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing.
      “The Help” is her first novel. After both presentations in Jackson Stockett answered questions from the audience.
      “The Help” tells the story of white women and their black maids during the 1960s as the Civil Rights era heats up. It centers on a friendship that crosses race, class and age lines.
Stockett grew up in Jackson with a small group of friends, including Tate Taylor, the filmmaker who wrote the 130-page screenplay of “The Help” and will direct it.
      The film was recently bought by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios and is scheduled to start filming this summer in Mississippi.
      “My hope is that the film will stay true to the story,” said Stockett.
      During her appearance at the Eudora Welty Library, Kathy Johnson, wife of Mayor Harvey Johnson, offered Stockett any assistance necessary to bring the filming of “The Help” to Jackson.
      Stockett was also interviewed for the Mississippi Catholic prior to her visit.
      What follows is Stockett’s response to questions about “The Help.”
      Q. “The Help” is becoming more known in the African American community. Do you think that might be why the book is still on the New York Times Bestseller list?
      A. “I can’t explain that. I think it took a while to catch on and I think a lot of people were a little bit wary of a white girl addressing a subject, that maybe she didn’t have the right to write, in a voice that wasn’t my own.
      “I get that. I felt the same way writing in the beginning. But then once the story started rolling, I had to set that aside because I wanted the story to be told. I felt like it hadn’t been told.
      “There are a lot of stories of white families and black help but I felt like this particular story and its perspective had not been told yet so I jumped off the bridge and told it.”
      Q. Have you heard your novel has started new conversations about race relations?
      “The people I’ve run across don’t want to talk about race. But I’ve found that if you turn it into a discussion about books it is a much easier discussion. When two people discover they have just read the same book, they have something in common and that can lead to a conversation they would not have had otherwise. But I don’t know. I’m just kind of on the outside looking in.”
      Q. Skeeter crossed lines in “The Help.” Didn’t you more or less cross lines in writing the novel.
      “Yeah, but I think it is a lot easier to cross lines 60 years after the fact. That is not me. All I ever did was hide behind the pages of a book.”
      Q. In your novel, Aibileen writes down her prayers. Where did that come from. Do you write down your prayers?
      “It’s something I used to do, just as Aibileen says in the book, I have found it to be more more effective that when you ask (God) for something, you need to get it just right.
      “I found I have to be very exact and really think it through when I have the guts to ask       (God) for something. I can do that in writing better than with my mouth because I can go back and erase something.
      Q. Why use dialect with blacks but none with the whites?
      “My grandmother spoke very properly. She grew up in China and her family was very precise in their words. I really liked to pair the black dialect with the white’s King’s English on the page.
      “It was really fun matching those two together. I understand why some people criticize that. Maybe I should have given the white people more euphemisms.
      “I know I didn’t get it all right. A lot of people have sent me notes asking, ‘Who is the Law? I don’t understand the Law.’ (Law is the term Aibileen use for Lord)
      “We weren’t allowed to say Lord, God or Jesus (growing up). It was considered taking the Lord’s name in vain. So I just remember Demetrie saying ‘Law’ instead (of Lord).
      “I thought it sounded kind of different. I just played back the tape in my head of Demetrie. It was so much more interesting to write in the black dialect. It is more musical, more poetic on the page.
      Q. Was the chocolate pie a symbol of “black rage?”
      “The chocolate pie? No. I just thought about the worst possible thing I could do to Hilly Holbrook.
      Q. Some book club members commented the black preacher and the angry young black man were too stereotypical?
      “Nobody ever said that to me. They are probably right in some ways.
      “In researching I read a personal account from 1964 before the Civil Rights Act passed from the perspective of the older generation as more pacifist, they wanted to sit at the table and reason about the issues.
      “But younger blacks were getting so angry. I wanted to show those two forces screaming at each other.
      Q. Are you working on another book?
      “Yes, it is coming in starts and stops. It is set in Oxford, Miss., during the Great       Depression. I think it is such an intriguing time. We think we are having hard times now but when I go back and read my grandparents’ letters, wow, I know I have never known hard times, not compared to what my grandparents went through.
      “I have the letters, books and different kinds of research, but I am in the first throes of everything. I haven’t really gotten to the juicy stuff.
      “It is mostly about having my way about women. I like to take men out of the picture. It’ s about what women can talk about, what women can do, and how they can survive, without men in their lives.”

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