In Other Words: The Help

In this week's In Other Words column, the recommends books that are similar to the popular The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which is being made into a movie.

The Help is set in Mississippi in 1962 before  the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The book  explores the themes  of race and class through the unlikely friendship of three women. Some other works that have similarities to The Help are available at the library, and are listed below:  

• Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gin,  2010: A young white girl in 1960s Mississippi watches the Civil Rights Movement unfold. One view is through her family who are tied to the Klan. The other is through the family of her grandparents’ African American maid Zenie. The arrival of Zenie’s college bound niece causes simmering racial tensions to erupt.
• Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund, 2003: Stella , a sheltered white college student in  1960s Alabama, is inspired to participate in her first freedom movement. Her life is forever altered through her new friendships with the African American freedom fighters.
• We are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg, 2006: In 1960s Mississippi, Paige, paralyzed due to polio, is trying to raise her daughter and have as normal of life as possible. Paige’s  daughter Diana helps take care of her mother and longs to be a normal teenager. Paige’s tough-talking, loyal and protective African-American caregiver Peacie often butts heads with young Diana. All three women ultimately help each other.
• Magic Time by Doug Marlette, 2006: Carter Ransom, a burned out New York newspaper columnist returns home to Mississippi to convalesce.  While there he has to face the reopening of a civil rights murder case from 1965. He was in love with one of four Civil Rights workers who had been killed and his father, a judge may have helped cover up information during the first trial.
• Jenniemae and James: A Memoir in Black & White by Brooke Newman,  2010: Author and  mathematician James Newman  has an unlikely friendship with his Illiterate, but numbers- savvy maid Jenniemae, who helped hold the family together through the 1940s and 1950s. This biography is written by James Newman’s daughter.
• Minds Stayed on Freedom: the Civil Rights Struggle in the rural south: an Oral History, 1991: This nonfiction work contains the stories of some of the early civil rights workers from Holmes County, Miss. in the 1960s. They were interviewed by eighth and ninth grade students from the  Rural Organizing & Cultural Center.