❆ ❆ 2 Mittens ❆ ❆

The Help by Kathyrn Stockett was seemingly read by every book club member in America the last few years. When I first heard about the novel, I knew I would never read it, at least not for pleasure. The story of “the help,” even a fictional one, should not be told by the white children under their care, especially without permission to do so. Those white children should tell their own stories and feelings about how they were raised, not assume to understand the experiences of the women who raised them. And for the story to be yet another white protagonist fairy tale of how poor black women and their apparently absent and/or violent black men obviously couldn’t get civil rights for themselves? Egregious. Obviously, I don’t mean that whites played no impact on the Civil Rights movement or have no claim to say they did.  But The Help is essentially the story of patronizing, know-better whites who help poor suffering put upon persons of color gain freedom. It’s an old trope (see also: Avatar, Dances with Wolves) that is not only offensive, it’s patently untrue in the case of Jim Crow South. Which is why the Association of Black Women Historians, among others, decided to call out the gross historical inaccuracies of The Help when the inevitable film was released. Continue reading →