The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
A friend of mine in college, who had grown up wealthy in the south, would recount stories of coming home in the afternoon and doing drugs in the living room with friends. Their black maid would simply dust around them. I'm a yank born and bred and I just thought that was bizarre on a number of levels. The Help rounds it all out. The characters are fully developed and the realities of the post Rosa Parks civil rights struggle clearly explored. It's a compelling story and would a make a great addition to any study on the Civil Rights movement.
One of my favorite lines from the book, "if chocolate was a sound, it would've been Constantine's voice singing. If singing was a color, it would've been the color of that chocolate." Stockett is descriptive, that much is certain.And the topic intriguing. A great look into a sub-culture that, with the exception of break-out books like this, keeps it's code of silence even now.

I've been intrigued since the last presidential election why blacks voted for Obama regardless of their own personal political views. In other words, blacks voted for a black candidate, based solely on race. Even when they didn't believe that he would represent their political views. This book sheds some light on the resentment and pain between the races in our country. The fact that Stockett is being sued, by her brother's domestic help, is a bizarre twist. In her attempt to "out" the tyrants, Stockett, knowingly or not, sides complicity with the tyrants.