Word: whiteness
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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...
What were the relationships between black servants and their white employers like in the 1960s? Well, I can only talk about my experience. I grew up in the 1970s, but I don't think a whole lot had changed from the '60s. Oh, it had changed in the law books - but not in the kitchens of white homes. As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time...
...adults employing them, the relationship is different. You hire someone to clean your house and do your laundry. But in many cases, these women worked for the same white family for generation after generation. That, to me, is the difference between an employee and someone you feel close to. They're an important cog in the wheel of your family. Some readers tell me, "We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family." You know, that's interesting, but I wonder what your maid's perspective was on that. You look at all these rules...
...talk to any African-American women who lived through that time period? I did get to interview a white woman and her maid who were together in the 1960s. It was so interesting to compare their perspectives. The white woman's strongest memory of her maid was of the delicious pralines she made. When I went to speak to the maid, she [remembered] working for this woman when [civil rights activist] Medgar Evers had just been assassinated. Her children were walking down the street in a protest and she was so afraid her employer would turn...
...worry about the implications of being a young, white author writing in the thick dialect of African Americans? I'm still worried about that. On the one hand I wonder, Was this really my story to tell? On the other hand, I just wanted the story to be told. But the truth is that I didn't think anybody was going to read it. Had I known it was going to be so widely disseminated I probably wouldn't have written it in the type of language that...