Our meeting on The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Thank you to Lora and our club guest R for hosting our noisy crowd. You are terrific hosts and always make us feel welcome. There's a lot of catching up and laughing at these meetings.

The food was Southern style—to complement our book's Mississippi setting. If anyone wants to share recipes (or origin of food), we had: 

 - A caramel cake
- Strawberry pie

- Strawberry and blueberry pie

- Black eyed peas caviar
- black eyed peas salad

- Corn bread pudding

- Corn bread

- Collard greens

- Fried chicken

- Biscuits
- Good alcohol

- Hot coffee
I'm stuffed. Did I leave anything out?

The Help is writer Kathryn Stockett’s first novel. And, except that she was born much later than the events of the novel, she was well qualified to write it. Besides having an English and creative writing degree and nine years of New York City advertising and magazine experience under her belt, Stockett is a southern lady through and through. She was raised in Jackson, MI, got her degree from the University of Alabama, and now lives in Atlanta with her daughter and husband. Her family maid helped raise her, and Stockett has loving memories of her. We had hoped to have our own Southern gal, Pat, at our meeting to weigh in on Stockett’s depiction of the South during the book’s time period, but alas, she was off to Arizona. Some of us lived for short stints in the south then, but, we’ve all been Yankees our whole lives and didn’t know from having maids.

What did we think of the book? Loved it. It made us uncomfortable. It gave us a lot to talk about. We were ashamed, as a whole, at how Southerners then seemed to have treated their “help”—not paying them well, having separate and separating rules for being with them. At the same time, as demonstrated by Skeeter’s love for Constantine, the relationships were close. It seemed that public expectations and private behavior were at odds. In the book, we get to be flies on the wall as people cross the very public lines—white/black; rich/middle class; black/white trash—and see how people react.
 Club members would recommend the book. Here’s what two of them say:
N: I would recommend it. I especially liked listening to it—there are 4 readers who read the main characters and are excellent at capturing the flavor of the language and the story. I really enjoyed the characters of Abileen and Skeeter. I think the author really made you care about the characters. The book showed how "the Help" was regarded and treated in the south in the ‘60s and also showed that not all in the south are racists. For me it was one of those books I didn't want to end.

L: I would certainly recommend this book and could see making this an English or Social studies class assignment, despite the Southern dialect. It addresses the civil rights movement at its beginnings in a fresh and compelling way, as well as revealing the tender and terrible realities of several varieties of close relationships between women, (mother / daughter, girlfriend to girlfriend, employer / servant, black /white). I love the honest personalities portrayed in this book, the whole story was very rich and real to me. (I’m now listening to the book on CD, fabulous acting!)

Join the conversation, make a comment.

We’ve scheduled our May 2010 book club meeting

Hello!
We miss you when you don’t come to book club! We eat and read, yes, but it’s the company and conversation that make us such a fine club.

Cathy was a gracious hostess. The table setting was elegant, complete with Waterford Crystal glasses, and the booze flowed as did our conversation. Husbands contributed to our feast—several Swedish dishes as a tribute to the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Herring and sour cream, potatoes and anchovies, Swedish apple cake. Thank you to the husbands for the Chicken Pot Pie and the fancy potatoes. A couple of the recipes are featured on our recipes page. And, Karen learned there’s a movie with the same title in the offing. Go to our movies page for details. Now on to the reason for today’s blog:

Our next meeting date and book

Sunday, May 22

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

The Help is available in print or audio at the public libraries, but most have a waiting list—get on it fast. Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble have ample copies if you want to buy it for about $15.


Kathryn Stockett’s synopsis on her website is written to lure us in:
  “Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

  "Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone."

See more details at Stockett's website, which also has her bio: http://www.kathrynstockett.com/ 

The story is about Skeeter’s attempt to write something extraordinary that will get her the attention she needs to launch a writing career in New York City. She determines that, despite fear, nothing could be more noticeable (at the same time frightening and out of bounds) than writing about being a black maid for a white family in her day—1962—a year when civil rights and race riots are only part of the picture. Sounds juicy.


The blog discussing our views of the book will be posted soon after the meeting.
Happy Reading!

Join us!

The Ladies Eat and Read Society (Ladies E&R) has been active for years. Our members have varied careers—nursing, art, government, IT, sales, homemaking, editing; our family lives, backgrounds, and cultures are just as varied. We each bring a different perspective to our books and activities.

Being a member of Ladies E&R is an enriching experience. So why keep it to ourselves? This experience is worth sharing with anyone who is not able or chooses not to physically attend a book club meeting. Read About the Ladies Eat and Read Society and become an active member through our blog. Join us!

We’ll post shortly after every meeting—that’s about every 6 weeks—giving you plenty of time to leave comments about our books and activities and get ideas for live book clubs you might like to start.

About the Ladies Eat and Read Society (Ladies E&R)
Nancy and Mary (two friends) and I founded “The Ladies Eat and Read Society (Ladies E&R),” a book club, registered with our local library system. We loved to read, but were so busy with our families, careers, and work-related reading that we hadn’t made time to read for pleasure. Having a book due for a book club meeting would encourage us to read those best sellers or history tomes we’d always meant to read—and we’d have a ready discussion group. Join our discussion through your comments.

We’ve evolved
This year, The Ladies E&R celebrates its 12th birthday. Over time, our club has evolved beyond its original purpose (see About the Ladies), and we have expanded—we have a live branch club in another county.

The books we’ve read have inspired us beyond their pages. Now, as club members, we also
- Eat
- Do community service
- Travel
- See movies
- Host tea parties
- Attend lectures
- Welcome book authors
-Talk about it all
Read the details in More About the Ladies Eat and Read Society and be a part of our club.