Minny Jackson is a sassy young Negro with a talent for cooking who has trouble keeping her opinions to herself, a trait that has seen her fired from a great many positions. She works for Elizabeth and Raleigh Leefolt and derives great joy from their Baby Girl, Mae Mobley, although she is under no illusion that this will last. Aibileen Clark is a wise Negro woman who has raised 17 white children, and lost a son of her own.

Set in the early sixties in Jackson, Mississippi, the story is narrated in three voices: two black maids (“help”) and a young white woman.

A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.The Help is the first novel by Kathryn Stockett. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.Īibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Kathryn stockett the help 2009