DIOCESAN NEWS
04/02/10
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`The Help’ draws comments
By Fabvienen Taylor
      “I grew up in that era. My mother was a domestic and would come home exhausted every day. The author says her characters and their comments are fictitious, but the experiences of the black domestics are not fictitious. My mom was not treated that way but I remember hearing her friends talking about their employers.
      “That is why I got a college degree and later retired from a government job. I never wanted to be a domestic.”

Carolyn Lindsey
TLC Jackson Book Club
Jackson St. Peter parishioner

      “I think the author did a fantastic job of capturing the pain and fear of that era, in those women working in those homes because they had to take care of their families, they had to survive.
      “It is difficult for me to put into words my feelings about how they had to suffer that type of indignity. But I do applaud the author for having the guts and the courage to put it on paper.”

Mary Nelums
TLC Jackson Book Club

      “As a white teenager and young adult in West Jackson in the 1960s, I found it hard to relate to the experiences in ‘The Help’ because my family didn’t have ‘help.’
      “I had a hard time believing that a trusting relationship between a black and a white woman could devel op during that time because the Civil Rights Movement was growing more intense.
      “There were errors in the book that bothered me. Although it is a work of fiction, when real people and places are mentioned, I think those facts should be accurate. The mistakes I saw should have at least been caught by an editor.
      “I gained some new understanding about the book after hearing the author speak about why she wrote it. I hope it continues to do what she has found beneficial — draw people of diverse backgrounds together into dialogue about race relations, especially how they can be improved.”

Jeanne Luckett, Tiger Book Club
Jackson St. Peter parishioner

      “What I love about the book is that it is about women — black women doing the best they can to survive, to raise their families in a turbulent time; then looking at these white women who are totally oblivious to all of that yet they are living in a time when women were expected to go to college, find a husband, get married and raise children. But they don’t really have an identity of their own, except for Hilly.
      “To be honest, the black women had their own inner strength, they had their own church, they had people behind them. I didn’t see where white women had much of that except when they went to their social club. They were trying to constantly be accepted. So they walked alike, talked alike, thought alike. To me I don’t see their freedom at all.
      "To me there is so much open for discussion in the book. My hope is people will read it and be a little more open about talking to each other.”

Tamara Allen
Starkville St. Joseph parishioner

      “I thought the book was very interesting and entertaining. What stood out for me was the overuse of persistent stereotypes we hear and see all the time about people, black and white.
      “There are stereotypes about black men not being supportive of their women, a black educated woman but not married, a black maid with five children married to a husband who abused her.
      “Then you have a white person from the wrong side of the track rejected because of the way she dressed and where she was from. There was not a Christian perspective in the group.
      “Then there are white women giving up all of their freedom to be supported by their husbands and right or wrong keeping that husband. Money and status means everything.
      “The portrayal of that black woman giving another woman feces to eat in that chocolate pie, is a horrible portrayal of that black woman, horrible. I don’t think a black woman would have done that.”

Joyce Hart
TLC Jackson Book Club
Jackson St. Peter parishioner

      “I enjoyed reading the book for the story’s sake and because there is lot of humor that addresses a serious situation for the people in the book.
      “I was born in the ‘60s and oblivious to what was going on. But in looking back and thinking, I started thinking about the lady who worked for us, about what her life might have been like back then, what she might have been thinking.
      “My family was always involved andvery close to her family for going on 40 years. Our relationship continues today and I think it goes beyond race.
      “The book could open up some really good dialogue in a friendly way, in talking about the characters and other things in the book.”

Mary Woodward,
Tiger Book Club

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