The Help

Thank you all who came to book club this month! As I said in the email, I adored The Help. It was recommended to me and right after I read it I wanted us to read it as a book club, and apparently someone else did too because it was thrown into the mix.

If you haven't read it, I would suggest you do so. The story follows the lives of several different women in the 1960s, predominantly young white women and the African-American (let's be PC here) women who are employed as their maids (hence the name of the book "The Help.") The main character, Skeeter, writes a book about the lives of these maids, and in doing so ends her relationship (I didn't like him anyways) and her friendship with her childhood best friend (the uppity white woman.)

The racial issues in the book brought out great discussion for our little book club. I think we can all agree that racism is blatantly wrong, but can all admit to prejudging others or possibly even practicing reverse racism. It was interesting that even in our time we were still able to discuss people in our lives who were or are racist, and the effect that has had on us. We also discussed how people generally tend to form social groups based on similarities, like we in book club like reading, talking over each other and probably look down on people who don't read!

To summarize book club this month, the majority liked the book, I made homemade cookies that were edible, racism is wrong, although still exists and most of us have had some experience with it, Diana's last name is German, the only STD you can get from a toilet seat is crabs and Robyn now knows what crabs are, things made in China are bad, and free Tibet. I look forward to seeing you all next month!