Stuff I like by Benita
I'm awesome.
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Why "The Help's" critics are all wrong - Salon.com
This is an interesting and well-written piece on the “controversy” surrounding “The Help.” I haven’t read it yet so I have no thoughts one way or the other (I didn’t want to travel with my borrowed large hardcover), but it’s next on my list.
“As a reader or viewer, you might not like “The Help.” It is a formulaic Hollywood feel-bad and then feel-good work, one in which beautifully bathed-in-sunlight characters say Very Important Things while music swells. But there’s a difference between being critical of the work and being squeamish about someone’s right to create it. It’s clear that the main problem a lot of people have with “The Help” is that the story was written by a white lady. And that’s a really bad road of reasoning to go down, people.
The job of fiction is to inhabit someone else. Argue, if you will, that Stockett didn’t do a credible job — but don’t bother taking offense that she ambitiously took on the challenge in the first place. Don’t assume that only the Toni Morrisons or Alice Walkers or Sapphires of the world have permission to write in the voice of African-American women. Or, for that matter, that members of any group should only write about their own.
Flaubert once famously said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” Who’s to say that a man can’t write of the tragic frustrations of a housewife? That a Russian can’t channel a Continental pederast? A Japanese man can’t write about postwar English servants? Or a white woman can’t write about African-American maids? That’s fiction in a nutshell for you. Otherwise, it’s called memoir.”
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50 books in 2012: “The Help”
I only made it to about 35-ish last year. I stopped posting them and counting after it was apparent there was no way I would hit 50 in 2011. So here we go again…
I had borrowed this from a friend a long time ago and finally got around to reading it. I’m glad I read it after all the hype, both good and bad, died down since I kind of forgot about it all while reading it.
I enjoyed it well enough, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was well-written. It was a fairly quick, decent night-time read. I would classify it as typical middle-aged women’s book club material: Predictable, emotional, women’s empowerment type of stuff, but nothing revolutionary or extraordinary. A solid 2.5 stars.
(I rented the movie over the weekend from Redbox while grocery shopping, and I felt the same way: Decently mediocre.)
Newspaper copy editor, semi-new homeowner, amateur baker who is in love with words, sarcasm, news, pop culture, bright colors, music, design, books, Detroit, DIY.
