Recommending a book called The Help
Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 6:26 pm
I downloaded and am reading, thru Kindle on my iPhone, a book titled The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.
I hope I'm wording this ok so's not to offend anyone:
I am really enjoying it. It takes place in the late 50s early 60s in the deep south, and revolves around the womenfolk; rich white ladies/families and their black maids.
As a person that grew up in the north, I suppose I never really took to heart the racial conflict in the south. It was just something we read about or saw on TV.
Anyway, I'd thought I'd mention the book so you can decide if it's something that might interest you, too.
Kathryn's interview with Katie Couric http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6259944n
Excerpt about the author from the web:
Jan Harayda has sent us another dispatch from Fairhope, Alabama, where she's a writer-in-residence at the town's Center for the Writing Arts, as debut novelist Kathryn Stockett dropped by Page & Palette Books to read from The Help (already a NY Times bestseller). As Harayda reports, Stockett sounded a bit awestruck by her visit:
"They're planting flowers outside, and it's the middle of a recession," Stockett told a standing-room-only crowd, after noticing that a town grounds crew had been digging up the daffodils that lined the streets and replacing them with tulips. But it was the crowd's turn to be awed when Stockett spoke about the publishing history of her first novel, the story of a white Ole Miss graduate who returns to her Mississippi hometown in the early 1960s and finds herself startled by how her friends treat their black maids. Stockett was born and raised in Jackson and said that while her portrayal of race relations in her state may upset some, her closest relatives were "truly relieved" when agent Susan Ramer signed the novel and sold it to Amy Einhorn Books. "I got 45 rejections from agents," she revealed, "which means that my mother had to listen to me moan and feel sorry for myself 45 times."
I hope I'm wording this ok so's not to offend anyone:
I am really enjoying it. It takes place in the late 50s early 60s in the deep south, and revolves around the womenfolk; rich white ladies/families and their black maids.
As a person that grew up in the north, I suppose I never really took to heart the racial conflict in the south. It was just something we read about or saw on TV.
Anyway, I'd thought I'd mention the book so you can decide if it's something that might interest you, too.
Kathryn's interview with Katie Couric http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6259944n
Excerpt about the author from the web:
Jan Harayda has sent us another dispatch from Fairhope, Alabama, where she's a writer-in-residence at the town's Center for the Writing Arts, as debut novelist Kathryn Stockett dropped by Page & Palette Books to read from The Help (already a NY Times bestseller). As Harayda reports, Stockett sounded a bit awestruck by her visit:
"They're planting flowers outside, and it's the middle of a recession," Stockett told a standing-room-only crowd, after noticing that a town grounds crew had been digging up the daffodils that lined the streets and replacing them with tulips. But it was the crowd's turn to be awed when Stockett spoke about the publishing history of her first novel, the story of a white Ole Miss graduate who returns to her Mississippi hometown in the early 1960s and finds herself startled by how her friends treat their black maids. Stockett was born and raised in Jackson and said that while her portrayal of race relations in her state may upset some, her closest relatives were "truly relieved" when agent Susan Ramer signed the novel and sold it to Amy Einhorn Books. "I got 45 rejections from agents," she revealed, "which means that my mother had to listen to me moan and feel sorry for myself 45 times."