Blog for Week: 10/14/15, 2015, The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Questions: What special way did the author write? Did it make it better or worse? Explain. Select a quote from your reading that you liked. What made you pick it? How does it make you pause and think?

Pages: 444 (This counts as two books)

Genre: Historical Fiction

Ratings: 4.44/5

The book I read for the beginning of my 40 book challenge is The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It's about a certain town in which racism is immense and effects lives everyday. There is violence, injustice and dreams waiting to be given a chance. Not everyone is biased and unjust, some like Skeeter, a woman with dreams of being a writer, wants to give all people a voice. But in a town filled with violence and supression there is a giant risk. Will they gain a voice or will they live with injustice?

The author wrote the book in a first person view format. It gave me different views from one story/event. Acceptance was one of the themes in the book and sometimes it was hard to understand how a certain character was feeling when problems arrived. It gave me much more insight on how different people thought and treated racism. 

There are many memorable quotes in The Help. But only a few of them had a big impact on me. One quote that impacted me the most was, " “Once upon a time they was two girls,” I say. “one girl had black skin, one girl had white.”

Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening.

“Little colored girl say to little white girl, ‘How come your skin be so pale?’ White girl say, ‘I don’t know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?’

“But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, ‘Well, let’s see. You got hair, I got hair.'”I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head.

“Little colored girl say ‘I got a nose, you got a nose.'”I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me.

“Little white girl say, ‘I got toes, you got toes.’ And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can’t get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on.

“‘So we’s the same. Just a different color’, say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End.”

Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn’t even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, “Tell it again.”"

This quote tells us what Aibileen, a maid, hopes that Mae, a white child, will be in the future. In her world all of the white children grow up to be filled with the values that colored people have no worth but she wants to teach her that there is no difference between all people and that we can put an end to that. It shows her hope. It makes me start to think about how life was raising another child only to have them be your enemy later on. 

I definitely recommend the Help.

I commented on Hazel's Blog, Brimady's Blog, Evelyn's Blog, Sophie M., and Kezia's Blog.