Post by violet on Jul 2, 2011 20:57:36 GMT 11
I'm currently enjoying reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. It still sickens me that conditions like this ever existed.
As a young teen, still in California, our school had some kids bussed in from an area where the school had been damaged by earthquake.
There was a lot of talk about the initiative - this was in the early 1970's - but from what I could see none of the kids at my school noticed the socio-economic or race differences.
www.kathrynstockett.com/
"Library Journal (starred review)
Set in Stockett's native Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s, this first novel adopts the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family, and watched the children they cared for commit bigotry. In Stockett's narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. Even if they're published anonymously, the risk is great; still, Aibileen and Minny agree to participate. Tension pervades the novel as its event are told by these three memorable women. Is this an easy book to read? No, but it is surely worth reading. It may even stir things up as readers in Jackson and beyond question their own discrimination and intolerance in the past and present."
As a young teen, still in California, our school had some kids bussed in from an area where the school had been damaged by earthquake.
There was a lot of talk about the initiative - this was in the early 1970's - but from what I could see none of the kids at my school noticed the socio-economic or race differences.
www.kathrynstockett.com/
"Library Journal (starred review)
Set in Stockett's native Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s, this first novel adopts the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family, and watched the children they cared for commit bigotry. In Stockett's narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. Even if they're published anonymously, the risk is great; still, Aibileen and Minny agree to participate. Tension pervades the novel as its event are told by these three memorable women. Is this an easy book to read? No, but it is surely worth reading. It may even stir things up as readers in Jackson and beyond question their own discrimination and intolerance in the past and present."