Picked this up at the Book Thing in Baltimore, Maryland. I really don't need any more to read, but this came highly recommended.

Registered in Centreville, Virginia, USA.

Aibileen and Minny are housemaids in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, who work for old friends of Skeeter (whose real name is Eugenia, but pretty much no one calls her that). Skeeter is the only one of her friends who didn’t drop out of college to get married, and is now back home after graduation, trying to figure out what to do with herself. She longs to be a writer, and with a little encouragement from a woman at a large New York publishing firm, she decides to write a book. She’s unsure of a topic until her friend Hilly’s “Home Help Bathroom Initiative,” encouraging all white families to get a separate “colored” bathroom installed in their homes for the help. According to Hilly, African Americans are genetically different from whites and carry special diseases. The idea that the very same person who cooks your food and cleans your bathroom would be so dirty as to require their own little stall out in the garage just baffles my mind. The double standard doesn’t end there, though. The white ladies of the Junior League regularly raise money to help “the poor colored children of Africa” and yet turn their noses up at the idea of helping the poor colored kids of Jackson. In secret, Skeeter and Aibileen write a book about life from the point of view of the help, conducting interviews with numerous maids around the city, all the while knowing about the very real danger if the wrong people find out. Meanwhile, Minny is dealing with a tarnished reputation due to her lying former boss (Hilly), an abusive husband, and the strange secretiveness of her new employer, Celia. This book is touching, maddening, hilarious, sad, and ultimately uplifting. Now I want a sequel. I want to know what happens to Minny, Aibileen, and Skeeter. I want to know how Mae Mobley turns out when she grows up. In short, this was an excellent book and completely unforgettable. Highly recommended.

This is meyldia's copy, but she's letting me journal this:

I was told the movie was amazing. But I recently signed a petition promising to read the book before seeing the movie. And, really, I'd heard such great things about this book and wanted to read it. So I bumped it up in priority and the hold I put on it at the library came through. Wow. I fell in love with this book HARD. For weeks I kept telling everyone I knew that they had to read it.

The story is told from the perspectives of one white twenty-something woman who moved back home to Jackson, Mississippi after college and two black maids who work in the same town. Through their intersecting lives, we see a full picture of the town and culture from different perspectives. We meet characters we don't like and ones we fall in love with. We cringe at the bathroom initiative and want to snuggle the sweet little kids who love Aibileen and laugh at toilets on the lawn. I was shocked and surprised and horrified and terrified.

After a while, the connection among all the characters turns out to be a book of interviews/stories told by black maids in the same small town of Alabama. Skeeter's idea to write something that's important to her changes EVERYTHING. It breaks barriers, it exposes situations, it creates ill-will, it shows wonderful truths. It was wonderful seeing the maids coming out finally to tell their stories--both good and bad. It was wonderful seeing Miss Skeeter finally realize how she felt about segregation. Mostly, it was wonderful just seeing how these people who didn't even know each other or want to change the world realize that they are dear friends, connected by something that is absolutely amazing and world-changing. My favorite parts were without a doubt Aibileen and her love for her children (and her secret stories and attempt at making Mae Mobley feel worthy). I was moved to tears several times, especially after the book came out.

I know the book & movie have faced criticism for not going further to tell more about black men or to tell about sexual abuses. But the point, as I saw it, was to show what had happened to THESE maids. Yes, they're fictional, but at some point, adding more would make them more like fictional stereotypes. They can only have so much happen to them. And I feel like there was more than enough. Skeeter and her mama's cancer, Aibileen and her son's death, Minny and her abusive husband... but also Hilly and her husband's political aspirations, Celia and her pregnancies, Stuart and his family. There was so much packed into this book, but done so beautifully.

I really connected with the characters and felt like I knew them intimately by the end of the book... but also that there was so much MORE to know about them. They felt like real people I had just spent weeks getting to know because they'd let me in on parts of their lives for a while. I wasn't alive during the time period, so I don't know how accurate a representation it was, but I enjoyed it and thought it was great. I can't wait to see the movie now, though I'm told the ending is different.

Bringing this to the BCinDC meetup at Ballston Mall in Arlington, VA. I hope it doesn't come home with me.

Picked it up at the BCinDC meetup this afternoon. It's been one of those books I've been meaning to get, so when it showed up at the meetup, it had to come home with me!

I loved this book. I brought it with me to finish on a business trip, and even though I had to get up early to catch my flight out, I stayed up too late to finish it. I couldn't put it down. Now that I've read it, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie. Great characters, and you were really rooting for all the narrators.