A Not So Distant Past: The Book List

My book club didn’t read The Help only because, by the time we banded together, about a third of us had already read it. Intrigued since this group of ladies have already chosen quite a few good reads in the past months, I picked up The Help and began to read. We wouldn’t be discussing it at our book club, but I knew I could discuss it on the book list.

Enjoying The Help felt a bit like guilty pleasure; here is a white woman writing black women in a thick dialect that rightfully garners some eyebrow raising and criticism; here is an altruistic white character laboring to expose the truths of black maids working in Jackson, Mississippi, doing so on a lark and not realizing the implications that writing these stories may have until late in the book; here are two wise others, who help educate the lost white person, with their folksy, foreign wisdom; yet it somehow works, if only while you’re reading, before the problems of the book come to nag you when you close the cover. I can’t help it: I like the writing, I loved the honesty of Minny and Aibilene (who are the first two maids interviewed by the white character, and also narrate the book), but I eye the book with unease. The way the book plays out is problematic and perhaps a little bit too simplistic.

While reading, the driving force for me was, as always, “What’s going to happen?”, but not in the typical way one experiences when reading. I just couldn’t see how this wouldn’t end badly for Minny and Aibilene, and I knew in the back of my head that the white protagonist, Miss Skeeter, wouldn’t come to harm because she was the author rendered in fiction; no, Kathryn Stockett wasn’t in her early 20s in the early 1960s, but reading her afterword was just confirmation of my suspicions that she is Miss Skeeter, escaped from Jackson to New York (and you know how much I hate the intentional fallacy, but this book absolutely sings it when the focus is on Skeeter). And that’s also why I wonder if Stockett was hesitant to render Skeeter more realistic, knowing that this was a part of her life on the page—reluctant to expose her own family and upbringing to what would probably be rightfully deserved criticism. Because that “What’s going to happen?” hasn’t been consistently good for the black people of Mississippi even though it’s now the 21st century. Things don’t come up all roses for Minny and Aibilene, but both their stories end on a somewhat hopeful note. I do have to ask myself, how realistic is that, even with the “insurance” they gave themselves?

This isn’t to say the book isn’t worthwhile in its own way—I think it is useful as an examination of literary tropes, conventions and the problems with a white person writing minorities; I also don’t doubt that people with the strong racist attitudes portrayed here still exist all over the country, not just in the South, and to make people aware of them and make them think about their own perceptions of whom they may term an “other” is a good thing. The outcomes for all three protagonists might ring a little too perfect and not so real world, but the novel isn’t setting out to be a heartbreaking, realistic rendition of the consequences of the women’s actions; it’s a surface examination of the culture that thrived in Jackson and across the South in the 1960s, and that probably still survives today. It calls attention to how things still need to change, and that change is an active but slow-moving agent that requires many people to propel it forward. (And that applies not only to racism in this country in general, but in literature, too.) This wasn’t that long ago, and there is much that is still wrong with this country when it comes to race relations. I have two words: Tea Party.

Also, it’s good to give reads like this a chance because people should ask questions about authorship, experience and racism. Stockett’s tricky territory is fair game for examination even if people enjoyed the novel. Stockett is a good writer, definitely, but her novel does have flaws, and should Stockett tackle race again, I hope the criticism she received for The Help is taken to heart.

I’d say give it a read. Problematic? Yes. But  a book that makes you think about these deeper issues is a good catalyst to encounter.

Onto the book list.

Finished:

1) The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
2) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
3) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4) Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde
5) Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
6) Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
7) Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
8) Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
9) Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer
10) The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton
11) Under the Dome by Stephen King
12) Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman
13) Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
14) The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez
15) The Road by Cormac McCarthy
16) The Hidden by Tobias Hill
17) The Best American Short Stories 2009: Edited by Alice Sebold & Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor)
18) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Translated by Reg Keeland)
19) The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
20) The Grift by Debra Ginsberg
21) The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Re-read:

Empty

Currently Reading:

1) Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
2) Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
3) Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Husband or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) About My Sisters by Debra Ginsberg
2) Blind Submission by Debra Ginsberg
3) The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Translated by Lucia Graves)
4) Do Not Deny Me: Stories by Jean Thompson