Take that, The Help.

Remember when Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help was all the rage?

Personally, I remember trying to force my way through the first fifty pages, and then tossing it away in disgust, wondering, once again, how a white woman got away with* writing such terrible, stereotypical dialect.

Well, if you didn't care for that book (or maybe if you did, and you're looking for a different perspective), read bell hooks's elegant takedown of it** (and others of its ilk).*** It's everything I always wanted to say about The Help, except that she put it way, way better than I ever could. (One of my favorite bits? "hooks took aim, specifically, at fashionable best-selling novels that romanticize the idea of inter-racial sisterhood and have reduced the idea of feminine solidarity across cultures into light, feel-good sentimental tripe.")

That is all. Now get thee home and read some Shirley Jackson so you're all ready for next week's Book Menage.

*Got away with? More like made out like a bandit with.

**Thanks to Bookslut for the link.

***To be clear: the article is actually a journalist's article about a talk given by bell hooks on this subject.

Comments

[Nan]

Thank you, thank you -- now I can stop feeling vaguely guilty to not reading The Help and not WANTING to read The Help or see the movie, for many of the reasons that hooks so eloquently lays out (though from a guilty white liberal perspective, I guess). I just can't stand the patronizing pat-myself-on-the-back quality of those books -- and I've had to keep a straight face for years now at the circ desk while library patrons (most of them white women of a certain age) rhapsodize about how wonderful the book is. Ugh. At least now I can start suggesting they read some bell hooks ...

[lesbrarian]

Nan: PREACH IT.

CR: I'm stealing this for my NoveList column. It may be that my readers are sick of hearing me talk about race and sex in a forum that's supposed to be about readers' advisory, but that's just too bad.

That's assuming I have any readers. I don't actually know that. Nor do I actually care. It pays, is the thing.

[bybee]

I hate The Help so much. Thank you!

[Citizen Reader]

Nan, Lesbrarian, Bybee:

Oh, it was SO my pleasure. I love a good elegant smackdown in any case but it was very satisfying to read a good one of one of the most annoying novels of all time (to my mind).

Nan, all I've ever read by bell hooks was "Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood," but it was well worth it. Really hard to read in parts but very good.