The Help by Katherine Stockett

by Nilda Violeta Vargas on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 12:12am

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a young white journalist returns to her hometown in Jackson, Mississippi after college to find nothingnes awaiting for her. She applies for a job at a New York-based magazine as a writer and journalist. Her agent-to-be suggests that before achieving her dream , she must prepare for it by finding her passsions and then writing about them. She manages to land a job as a Dear Eloise - type of advice columnist on housekeeping in her own hometown.She turns to Aibileen, a black servant at one of her best friend's house for housekeeping knowledge. Also, upon her return back home , Skeeter , as she's known to her family, is unable to locate her nana, Constantine, whom she corresponds with during her college years. She tries to find out the truth from Aibileen about Constantine's abrupt departure which seems to be a taboo subject at her house.The relationship between Aibeleen and Skeeter develops as they weave the experiences in an anonymous tell-all novel based on the Black housekeepers/nanas/servants in Mississipi and their relationships with their employees, all white women, who either humiliate them on a daily basis or shelter them and their families from the harsh cruelty of discrimination in the South.The voices of three women, Aibileen's , Minny's, also a housekeper, and Skeeter's, are channelled to give the reader a glimpse into the discrimination of blacks in the 1930s and the powerful dynamics of the relationships between both groups of women, and their husbands as mere observers.