A Review of The Help and My Own Healing

I few weeks ago I finished The Help by Katheryn Stockett.  Since that time the story has stuck in my mind like taffy—twisting and softening and pushing itself into the many nooks and crannies of my life.  I love books like that.

As a female, I have a very profound emotional reaction to literature.  Usually I base how much I like a book on how I “feel” about it.  And though this book, like many before it, was pulling back the curtain on the Civil Rights Movement (usually a very hard topic) I felt uplifted, brightened by its story.  The stories of these women warmed my spirit.

As an English teacher, I can’t help but look at a piece of literature critically.  Though cliché, the rotating perspectives was charming.  The characters are well developed, but fulfill very archetypal roles.  What does have complexity? The relationships.  It’s one of the few novels I’ve read that pushes its plot forward primarily by building stronger connections between its characters, rather than by events or outcomes.  The voices of the three narrators are superb and identifiable to most women.  Minny is all sassafras and determination—but she’s weak too, in her relationship with her husband.  Aibileen is tried and true—she is wise and strong and practical.  She carries herself with humble dignity.  I love her.  Then there’s Skeeter.  She’s complex and real.  I want to be her friend.  Be warned that this novel is typical “southern” literature—it meanders.  So don’t expect to get to a punch line in any kind of a hurry.

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            This book is healing.  It soothes, despite conquering some heavy stuff.  This week a former student of mine took his life.  It’s the first time I’ve met this situation, though many of my compatriots have been here before—some, unfortunately, many times before. Upon finding out this news I lost myself, and I found Aibileen.  I forget, sometimes, how important my students are to my being—how connected to them I become—like Aibileen to her white babies.

I want to take each of them into my arms, these children born to other women, and I want to rock them back and forth.  I want to whisper into their ears, “You are good.  You are kind.  You are smart.”  I want to repeat this until it embeds itself into their souls.  I want them all to realize that each day they remind me of optimism, and the luster of youth, and how to live unbroken.