Word: helpful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Kathryn Stockett never intended to write a best-selling novel. In fact, when she started writing her debut novel, The Help, she didn't think anyone would ever read it. But since coming out in February, her story about the complicated relationships between African-American domestic servants and the white women who employed them in pre-civil rights Mississippi has spent over 30 weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list. Stockett talked to TIME about growing up in Mississippi and what it's like being a white woman from the South writing from the perspective of African-American...
...decide to write The Help? I started writing it the day after Sept. 11. I was living in New York City. We didn't have any phone service and we didn't have any mail. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed. I was really homesick - I couldn't even call my family and tell them I was fine. So I started writing in the voice of Demetrie, the maid I had growing up. She later became the character of Aibileen [in The Help]. I sent the story to my mother...
...surprisingly, many people have found themselves trying to lend veterans a helping hand rather than asking for their help. While 7 out of 10 returning vets were offered a service from local do-gooders, only 1 in 5 was asked to serve. In particular, veterans say they are eager to serve by helping other veterans, aiding in disaster relief, helping the elderly and troubled kids and protecting the environment...
...Even though we're veterans and out of the service, we're still here for the community," says Shaun Tapie of Bellingham, Wash. The 25-year-old pulled two infantry tours in Iraq before leaving the Army last year. He recently spent a weekend with several fellow vets helping clean up an elderly lady's yard. "It was awesome just to be able to still help," he says. "We're not sitting there on corners asking for quarters." (See how to plan for retirement...
...threats, kidnappings and the murders of their loved ones back home, the relatively few Somalis in Nepal are just whiling away their time, waiting for what Hassan calls a "durable solution" - repatriation to Somalia, resettlement in another country or local integration in Nepal. As in Hassan's case, they help each other out and also celebrate festivals like Eid together. But they also complain angrily about what they see as the indifference of the Nepalese government and the UNHCR toward their predicament. (Read "Somalia's Crisis: Not Piracy, but Its People's Plight...