The Help by Kathryn Stockett

This is one of the best books I've ever read...and that's saying a lot! It should be required reading for everyone! The book is set in Jackson, Mississippi. It begins in August 1962. It alternates between the viewpoints of three women. Skeeter is a young white woman who recently returned home after finishing college. She begins to question all the things she's taken for granted all her life, including the fact that "colored" people are treated as inferior individuals. The other two women are two of the colored maids in town whom Skeeter gets to know over a period of time.

I was born around the time the book took place, so don't have a first hand memory of all the situations that are referenced, such as segregated facilities for blacks and whites, but I've certainly heard a lot over the years. This book really brought things into focus. Apparently Jackson, MS (where the author grew up) was one of the worst places in the South when it came to treatment of blacks at the time.

Throughout history humans have displayed the need to establish often arbitrary distinctions between two groups of people that make one party better or worse than the other. One of the issues that is central to the book was that many white employers had separate, often outdoor, bathrooms (I think we call them outhouses!) for the colored help so they wouldn't "contaminate" the toilets used by the household. Attitudes such as this, that the color of your skin makes you less intelligent and a carrier of diseases, simply boggle my mind.

According to the notes from Stockett at the end of the book, many of the situations that the different characters experience were based on her own upbringing. She does an exceptional job of allowing the reader to understand the dynamics of the changing times. The book is extremely thought-provoking. There are many scenes that are very poignant, many more that enraged me, but she also manages to weave in some truly funny and ironic moments as well. Amazingly, this is her first book. I look forward to more books by her.