Book Review: The Help

                                                                                   BOOK INFORMATION:                                                                  

Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

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.

                                                                        MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK                                                              

“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”

This book was shockingly amazing. I literally expected to hate this book mainly because historical fiction isn't typically my thing, to be honest.  It was quotes like the one above that made me really think during my read of this book. This book is such a great novel, the help is different than most historical fiction that I have read. It doesn't include any fantasy elements which I liked.

The Help follows the life of dozens of house-maids in the second half of the 20th century. In what is pretty racist Mississippi. This book is just pure raw emotion and made me cry during the book so many times. It isn't a book that puts race issues into two different boxes like some books I have read in the past have. It showed the grey that happened during the time. This book shows the differences in thought between people on various issues of race. It shows how we are as people. and our similarities as humans. I loved that so much. We all just want to be treated with respect. We all just want to be accepted for what and who we are.

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

This book was hard to read in parts. I wanted to skip forward and see some changes happening. But I realized how important reading the bad was. To remind me of how far we have come and how far on the issue of race we still need to go.  The parts when Minny and Aibileen talked about their work, the way they were treated, and how hard their lives were, really got to me at times. I was so eager to turn the pages and figure out what was going to happen, and I always hoped things would be better. 

I loved Skeeter in this book. She was such an important part of this story. She has the ability to change things in a way no one is expecting. Through her wonderful and powerful writing. Even though you would think her life would be easier being white, she still faces so many obstacles. She has an unbreakable spirit that I admired so much. I thought she was such a phenomenal character. 

“All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries.”

Overall, the themes in this book were amazing and extraordinary. They included equality, racism, feminism, freedom, and ultimately respect. The book was just breath-taking to read.