The setting is Jackson, Mississippi in 1962-63, where the Jim Crow laws are fully in effect and ingrained in everyone, across color lines. Everyone knows where their boundaries are, but that doesn't make it easy to take.
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Skeeter is a young white woman who had just graduated from Ole Miss, but is expected to just get married and blend nicely into society. Her friends in "the League" have done this, and her mother wants her to, but the more she sees, the more she knows something is not quite right, that it's not a good fit. She wants desperately to be a writer.
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Aibilene is an experienced maid, wise in the ways of surviving as a black woman in a white world. As a housekeeper she is raising her seventeenth white child. The bond is strong, but she knows it will lead to heartbreak. It always does. She has changed since the death of her own son, who seemed to be just tossed away by the white bosses.
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Minny is a sassy younger maid, struggling to hold in her rage. Her large family and abusive husband only compound the outrage she experiences working for white ladies. She has been fired so many times for stating her mind that it's hard for her to find work anymore.
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These three extraordinary women form a strange alliance and start a movement of their own when they decide they just aren't going to take it anymore.
I loved this book - the best I've read in years.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that just the best book? I also really enjoyed it. In fact, I just recommended it to someone yesterday.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the recommendations! I'll pick it up first chance I get, sounds great!
ReplyDeleteSylvia
I tried to read it but couldn't force myself to do it. I've read somewhere that women from the South sometimes have a hard time reading it. I don't know what my problem was but I couldn't do it.
ReplyDeletesounds like a powerful book.
ReplyDeleteNothing like GONE WITH THE WIND, huh?
ReplyDeleteYou seem to like to read about minorities. I am still reading HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, which you recommended. It is easy to read.
Thank you for these recommendations, Linda. I have written it down to purchase later after I read some classics I've picked up on my Kindle. This sounds fantastic! Keep those recommendations coming.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved The Help. In fact, when I finishedit, I then went back to the first page and read the whole story again. Although it's certainly not a humorous story, it does have some wonderful touches of humor.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a very good book. Even though I have read this, I appreciate recommendations both from like-minded readers and readers like Linda (A Slower Pace) that nudge me in new directions.
ReplyDeleteI recently finished Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees" set in the summer of 1964 just after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. It was a warm, funny and uplifting book and I'm going after "The Help" next!
ReplyDeleteP.S. Alibris.com always has great prices on used books. This is unsubsidized info; I have no affiliation with the site, I just order many many books from there. ;-)
This book is nothing short of POWERFUL! I so not wanted it to end.
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