The Help

I just finished the book on Thursday. I loved it! I had heard it was good and I had some friends going to see the movie that night and I wanted to make sure I was done. I loved the movie too! The actors they got to play each character was exactly how I pictured them! I made fried chicken while I read it. I thought about getting Crisco out and using it to clean some things. I had this sense of wanting to hang out with the help the whole time I was reading it. I like order. I like having a day to do things. "It's sheets washing day". I have made job calendars and tried to follow them and usually I keep to them for about a month but then life gets in the way and it doesn't happen anymore. I want to read the Ms. Myrna column. I would love to know all their cool tricks to domestic cleaning.

What's interesting is to read the back of the book where the author tells of her own life experiences. Where she grew up with a maid and loved her like a mother and never really knew how the maid felt about everything because she never thought to ask her. I don't know why, but looking at the picture I was shocked to realize she close to my age. I suppose that could have been me had I been born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi (and yes I just did the elementary school trick to spell out that dang state!) Why do I feel like this time period in our history was soooo long ago when it was my generation if you lived in the deep south.

I didn't however live in the deep south. I was born in Utah. I don't remember seeing anyone of any other race than white until I moved to the east when I was six. In 1981,we moved to a suburb of D.C. and my world changed. Not only was this area known for having a lot of African Americans, but it was international. Any country you could think of was represented almost in this area. Or at least it seemed to me. We would rudely point out the different color of people in the grocery store much to the dismay of my parents. Picture it, five white little girls following their mother around the grocery store pointing to this person and that person "mom, why does she look like that?" "mom, she is so dark!" "why does that man have a turban on his head?" Awesome, I'm sure my mom loved it.

I started having friends in the neighborhood and at school that were from lots of different places. I think it changed me and my sisters. I think it broadened our horizons and experiences. I don't think my parents ever planned to stay there. It was a four year assignment and yet my parents still live there today. I do however think it surprised my parents just how much it would change their daughters, their outlooks on society and who they would hang out with.

Well anyway...those were some of my thoughts after I read the book. When I was walking out of the movie theater, I was right behind a black woman. I immediately thought," I wonder what she thought of the movie?" Does she look at me as a white woman and think I'm more like Skeeter and can see all the injustice or does she look at me and think I'm more like Hilly. I chatted with some of my friends that I rode with about it. They all seemed to think that of course she would have known that we hated all the injustice just like she did.

I guess my experiences has taught me that maybe things aren't always so black and white.

What did you all think?