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Good Reading : September 2010
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8 goodreading ı SEPTEMBER 2010 Kathryn Stockett, bestselling author of The Help, was inspired to write by a bout of homesickness during the events of 9/11. After completing her degree in creative writing at the University of Alabama, she moved to New York to follow her dream of becoming a writer and when she was unable to contact her family due to the city's lockdown she started to write a story in the voice of the woman who was so important to her as a child -- her family's maid Demetrie. Kathryn is a classic Souther n belle; bor n and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, she is fiercely defensive and passionate about her Southern heritage, describing her relationship with her hometown as being like that with her mother -- only she can criticise it. In a letter to the reader at the back of her novel, Kathryn writes, 'I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too.' Now that her success has been firmly established, she has moved back south -- to Atlanta -- with her husband and daughter. Published in 2009, The Help is a story about three women who break conventions and explore the bonds of friendship in a volatile situation. Set in the 1960s, Aibileen and Minny are black maids to wealthy white families in Jackson, Mississippi, during the African- American Civil Rights Movement. Best of friends but vastly different characters, they deal in their own ways with the everyday contradictions they encounter, such as being trusted to raise their employer's child but not being allowed to use the same toilet. Completing the trio is Skeeter, a young white woman who is fresh out of college and dreaming of becoming a writer. After an incident opens her eyes to the inequities experienced by the 'help', she works with Aibileen and Minny to collect the maids' stories and for the first time give them a voice. Hospitality Southern KATHRYN STOCKETT recounts how her experience of growing up in the Deep South inspired The Help, her novel about African-American domestic workers and their charges. LIZZIE RILEY reports. cover story Martin Luther King, Jr Demonstrators at a civil rights march
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