Book Review: The Help

Pic courtesy flipkart

Just put down The Help, after a marathon session of reading. The last time I read a book this size, non-stop, in two days -with bits of cooking, getting kid ready for school, etc. interspersed - was when I read The Deathly Hallows overnight. I just could not put the book down.

The Help
Written by Kathryn Stockett
Published by Penguin books

Sensitively written, the story is about the unusual friendship between privileged, white women and the black maids that actually run the household, in the Deep South, Mississippi state, in the early 1960s.

Almost a century after the Civil War that freed the blacks from slavery, things haven't changed overmuch. OK, they are now paid for the work they do, but much else is the same. The segregation, the distrust, the racism, the exploitation, even the belief that the black people are 'not the same as us normal humans'. (One can almost substitute words like women, economically backward, blue collar workers, middle class, faiths-other-than-one's-own, other nationalities, cultures, differently-abled, sexually-differently-oriented...the list could go on- for black, and the  othering would be just the same.)

The book is many things.

It is the story of a few women, on both sides of the so called black-white divide, who reach out to each other in an attempt to tell the world the other side of the loving mammy story.

It is the story of women who stand up to the dictates of a discriminatory world that puts them last in the pecking order- the rich, white, heterosexual male being at the top. No matter that he may not be the best specimen representing human beings.

It is the story of a stand-off between two erstwhile friends, both strong people, when their differing personalities and beliefs put them against each other.

It is the story of how we make judgements about people based on our limited interaction with them, and how we are sometimes pleasantly/ unpleasantly surprised by finding a completely different person when the layers of our notions are peeled away. Not everything is as black-and-white (pardon the unintended pun) as we think it is with the people around us.

It is the story of nebulous ambitions, and the power of affirmative action.

So much to learn. And especially in the Indian context, where we can readily identify with the reality of ladies-of-the-house and domestic helps. A luxury that the privileged still have in our country.

It re-affirms my belief in the fact that but for the accident of birth and circumstances, Amma, my house-help, and I are not very different. I am privileged in that she shares the ups and downs of her life with me. I wait for her in the morning like I would wait for a good friend, and it has as much to do with the fact that she eases my everyday life as with the fact that there is some genuine caring on both sides.

As Stockett's character Miss Skeeter muses, "We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought." 

If you haven't read the book yet, it is worth getting your hands on it. Will be now looking out for the movie.

P.S.: While on the topic of house-helps and maids, check out this news item about robotic maids.:)    

Sidney Poitier - Life Beyond Measure



Pic courtesy teachwithmovies.org

The first I heard of Sidney Poitier was quite by accident, and without a realisation about the phenomenon that he is. This was way back in 1997, when we were in the US, and I picked up an interesting sounding movie at my library. It was about a young couple in love, and the girl gets the boy home to meet her parents. The boy is an extraordinarily well-educated person, with a responsible job in the UN, and by all accounts, a dream suitor for anyone's daughter. Reminded me of the Elizabeth Taylor classic- Father of the Bride, now re-made with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton as the parents.

Ordinary stuff, one would think. Except that it wasn't. The girl in question is a Caucasian, and the boy an African-American. What followed was extraordinary stuff indeed, considering that the movie was made in 1967, at a time when an inter-racial marriage was a punishable offence in at least 19 states in the US.

A wonderful movie. The parents are played by two of my favourites, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, a real-life couple, and the protagonist, John Prentiss, played by Sidney Poitier, all three Academy award winners, assisted ably by the newcomer who plays Joanna, the daughter. This was also the last movie in which Spencer Tracy acted, and he passed away a mere 17 days after filming ended.

Instead of telling you how the movie unfolds, I'll ask you to click on this link for a look at the movie trailer. Go on, click on it. It's a wonderful trailer, and if you've never watched the movie, it is worth your time.

I was fascinated by Sidney Poitier, bowled over, infact, (had quite a crush on him, if that word may be used!)and I proceeded to search out and watch all movies in which he has acted, all that I could lay my hands on. There was To Sir, with Love, based upon an autobiographical book of the same name by E. R. Braithwaite. There was A Patch of Blue, about a black man befriending a visually inpaired white girl, In the Heat of the Night, a crime thriller. There was Lilies of the Field, for which Poitier received an Oscar in 1963, becoming the first African American to receive the award for the Best Actor, male. He was all of 37. (He has also since received an Academy Honorary Award, "for his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence")

In every movie, one is struck with Sidney Poitier's persona and screen presence, and I was convinced that he was probably one of the priviledged few at the time among African Americans, who had had a wonderful opportunity at education. We are speaking, of course, of the 40s, 50s and 60s, at a time when the Civil rights movement had yet to give the wonderful results that have given us people like the present President of the US.

So when I came across two books penned by Sidney Poitier, his autobiography- The Measure of a Man, (which I have yet to read) and Life Beyond Measure, which is a collection of letters he has written for his great-grand-daughter, for her to read and know about the living history of her people when she is grown-up, I was amazed by what I read.

LIFE BEYOND MEASURE

Letters to my great-grand-daughter

Written by Sidney Poitier

Published by Simon & Schuster

Poitier undertook the writing of this book as a series of letters written to his great grand daughter, born around the time he was in his 70s.

He tells her of his humble beginnings, born as the youngest of a brood of poor farming parents. They lived on the Cat islands, in the Carribean, and it was just chance that Sidney was born on American soil. His parents had come to sell some produce in Florida- a simple thing to do at a time when there were no visa restrictions.

He had next to no schooling, and could not read or write very well when he was sent to America to make his fortune at the ripe young age of 16. Working in New York as a dish-washer, he chanced upon an advertisement for actors at a local theatre, but was rejected on account of his poor command on 'good' English.

Here was a turning point. A lesser person may have just not bothered bettering himself, and continued with his ordinary life. Not Sidney. He took it up as a challenge, and with the help of an elderly waiter, tutored himself, and presented himself to the same theatre group a year later. And the rest is history.

Poitier's letters tell us about his take on life, opportunities, faith, religion, family, love, commitments, marriage, fear, work, scientific advancements, war, health, and yes, about death, too. He does not dwell much on the films he has made, except when he needed to make a point. We also learn a lot about African-American history along the way. All in an easy conversational style reminiscent of a fable.

A legacy from a great-great-grandfather to his great-great-grandfather.

Crossposted at Bookreviews.

Have entered this review in the 2011 Global Reading Challenge in North America.

Book Review: DARBY



Pic courtesy flipkart

DARBY
Written by Jonathon Scott Fuqua
Published by Candlewick Press
Ages 9-12 yrs

Darby Carmichael is a white, 9 yr old girl living in Bennettsville, Marlboro county, South Carolina, in the racially intolerant early 1920s. She has two "best friends", Beth at the all-white school, and Evette Robinson, the girl who stays on the farm next door, the daughter of a black sharecropper. Darby looks forward to coming home from school everyday, so that she can just run off to play with Evette. Given a choice, of course, Darby would choose Evette over all her other friends, but even at 9, she knows that it cannot be done.

Darby's dream is to be a newpaper journalist, and she attempts to write for the local daily, helped to a large extent by Evette with whom she discusses her ideas, and who edits her work. This is accepted by Mr Salter, the editor of the Bennettsville Times, who is a friend of her father's. Of course, he knows all about Evette's role in this, but does not say anything, as he, along with Darby's father, is anti racial sentiment.

Darby gets better and better in her writing (with Evette's help of course), and soon has an article appearing in the daily every week, her family and friends making much of it! So when she witnesses the beating up of Evette's brother for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, by Turpin Dunn, a white man who she knows her father despises for his ill-manners and bad-tempered behaviour, and who her father knows is a member of the dreaded Klu Klux Klan, she proceeds to write about it. Fully knowing the furore this would cause, her father permits the daily to publish it.

What happens next? How is the following drama played out? Does right prevail in the end?

A wonderful book about the battle of right against wrong, about an innate sense of equality present in a child's mind, in a first person version of a 9 yr old on the "priviledged" side of racial segregation. A coming of age book, a journey from wide-eyed innocence to the slow dawning of a knowledge of reality, and the courage to stand up for what one thinks is right.

The book reminded me strongly of a well loved favourite-To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, reviewed here- and could be said to be along similar lines.

A good book to follow up this wonderful book reviewed by Meera on ST. A book in honour of Black History Month.

Crossposted at Saffrontree and at Bookreviews.