Can I get a woohoo!

The Help

Posted by Heather Manning On December - 29 - 2009

So, I read a lot of books. I mean, a lot. If I don’t have a new book on my Kindle, I’ll read the back of a shampoo bottle, cereal box, toilet paper bag, you get the point. What I don’t do is a lot of book reviews, and this isn’t a book review. But, I really really liked The Help. I’ve been waiting to read it for awhile. First after I heard about it at DST, I waited to buy it, because there were other books that I really really wanted to read. Then I had 2 books that I wanted to finish in front of this one. Finally got it going Sunday night. Finished reading it last night. So good.

Let me give you the Washington Post book review before I go into my rant.

From The Washington Post’s Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Sybil Steinberg
Southern whites’ guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don’t tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.
Newly graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English but neither an engagement ring nor a steady boyfriend, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan returns to her parents’ cotton farm in Jackson. Although it’s 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement, she is largely unaware of the tensions gathering around her town.
Skeeter is in some ways an outsider. Her friends, bridge partners and fellow members of the Junior League are married. Most subscribe to the racist attitudes of the era, mistreating and despising the black maids whom they count on to raise their children. Skeeter is not racist, but she is naive and unwittingly patronizing. When her best friend makes a political issue of not allowing the “help” to use the toilets in their employers’ houses, she decides to write a book in which the community’s maids — their names disguised — talk about their experiences.
Fear of discovery and retribution at first keep the maids from complying, but a stalwart woman named Aibileen, who has raised and nurtured 17 white children, and her friend Minny, who keeps losing jobs because she talks back when insulted and abused, sign on with Skeeter’s risky project, and eventually 10 others follow.
Aibileen and Minny share the narration with Skeeter, and one of Stockett’s accomplishments is reproducing African American vernacular and racy humor without resorting to stilted dialogue. She unsparingly delineates the conditions of black servitude a century after the Civil War.
The murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. are seen through African American eyes, but go largely unobserved by the white community. Meanwhile, a room “full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women” pretentiously plan a fundraiser for the “Poor Starving Children of Africa.” In general, Stockett doesn’t sledgehammer her ironies, though she skirts caricature with a “white trash” woman who has married into an old Jackson family. Yet even this character is portrayed with the compassion and humor that keep the novel levitating above its serious theme.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Now my rant. Last night after I got done I went to go do a review on Amazon like I always do with books I really really really like (or really really really hate) and I got distracted. (It happens easily.) I saw there were 1116 5-star reviews, 116 4-star reviews, and moving on down *egads* 25 1-star reviews.

I had to click and see who might give this 1 star. I would give it 5 personally, and I can understand 4-stars, but 1? There’s no way.

I saw this with the Twilight books the first time I noticed it. (People saying what a vampire could be/do, couldn’t be/do.) I just want to yell, for God’s sake people, it’s a fiction story. It doesn’t have to be accurate in every sense of the word. The author can take liberties because it’s fiction.

[Fiction - the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, esp. in prose form.]

[REVIEW]

BUT, and here I will rant a bit, where was the editor for this book? In the end notes the author confesses to playing with time. For instance, Shake ‘N Bake is mentioned but didn’t hit the shelves until 1965. A Bob Dylan song is referenced but wasn’t released until 1964. Okay, but why did they have to be included? They certainly weren’t plot points but a writer is allowed to just make stuff up? I find it disturbing that an author would go to the mat for trivial matters like this. But then, she references things in the book that hadn’t happened yet and these are significant civil rights events. A character is a member, presumably, of the Black Panther party which wasn’t founded until the second half of the sixties. And she refers to the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church (in which 4 girls were killed) well before the event happened. I found all this to be quite disturbing as the author was attempting to write about this time period in a thoughtful and respectful manner. To screw up key facts like this is, to me, very poor writing and editing.

Yes darling, she is. That’s why it’s called fiction. If she were the one writing Martin Luther King Jr’s autobiography, I would expect every single point to be accurate regarding history, I don’t expect it in fiction books, nor do I go nitpicking about to look and see exactly what date it was Shake ‘N Bake came out to see if she was right on the money or not.

[REVIEW]

Particularly galling to me was the inconsistent use of of dialect. I guess darkies of the time had to speak in that manner and amazingly, no white people had linguistic quirks. Very interesting indeed.

I can see the argument behind the dialect comments. Maybe she could have been more true to the way white southern women speak because every region in this country has their own way of talking, even me, an Iowan who will swear she has no accent (the rest of y’all do though), but has been told multiple times by Southerners and North Easterners that she does.

[REVIEW]

All the characters are complete stereotypes and the cherry on top is the standard middle-class white idealist women who saves the day and has the courage to badger those black women into telling their stories. what would they ever do without her?

Why is it wrong that back in the 60′s when the civil rights movement was going strong that a white woman would want to step up and help. Why is it wrong that when she sees something that is wrong that she wants to change it and tries doing it in a way that she can? And in my opinion, yes, Skeeter’s role was huge, but without the bravery behind the other 2 main characters Aibileen and Minny, Skeeter’s role in the story wouldn’t have made a difference at all. It took those 2 women to take a stand in a way that they could for the whole plan to come together. To ignore the fact that if they were caught it would be impossible to find a job or worse they could be hurt or killed over their part. There roles were equal in the book. The 3 women were equal in importance. If we all took a stand in a way that we can about something we feel is important, this world might be a better place.

I just need to not read reviews of a book I like because the nitpickers make me mad.

[REVIEW]

I guess for white middle-class women this might be a great book – only going a tiny bit outside the usual comfort zone.

Maybe that’s the problem. I’m a white middle-class woman.

I really hope I’m not as shallow as that statement makes me out to be.

I thought it was a great book and 1116 people agreed with me on Amazon, so I feel safe recommending that you read it. If you don’t have a Kindle, the hard cover is on sale for $9.50 on Amazon right now.

Now that I’m done ranting, don’t forget to check out the Simplify My Life giveaway to win a HP Mini 110-1100. To enter all you have to do is leave a comment on my post (and for another entry, you can blog about it too, there’s a link in my post to get to the rules.)

And as always if you love giveaways, check out the Giveaway Chick.

Off to take care of my cranky sick kids.

Also, if you know how to install a magazine theme on wordpress, and could give me a tutorial, I’d love you forever. I can’t get the one I want to use set up right.

ETA – don’t need the tutorial – got it set up FINALLY!

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Can I get a woohoo!

Posted by Heather Manning On December - 4 - 2009

Do you read Andy’s blog? She’s the Creative Junkie. She is one of the most well written, most funny blogs I have ever read. I think I’ve been reading for about 2 years maybe? She’s got a way with words that I just don’t have. One of the first blogs that I began to read regularly and the one I put down if something asks for my favorite blog. Andy had a giveaway for $100 in Harry Mason earrings. She drew a winner, it wasn’t me. I was good with that. I still love Andy. But this morning I go to read her newest post and what do I see? This. Yep, that’s right. Her winner didn’t contact her. (I am not gloating, I promise.) She redrew. She drew me! How awesome!!! I get $100 in Harry Mason earrings. I’m drooling, I tell you.

I wear (wear, not own) one pair of earrings and have for the past, mmmmm 7 years. It’s a pair of silver hoops that Pato got me when we were in Mexico. Those in and of themselves have a story behind them. I think they were 50 pesos at this stand in his town. I loved them. He told the guy he’d give him 20 pesos for them. The guy said no. He said he’d play quarters with him for them. The guy said ok. They flipped. Pato won. He took the earrings. I looked over and saw this guy’s wife and little boy who was probably 2 sitting there and I said, give him the 20 pesos you were going to give him in the beginning. He said, I won them fair and square. I said give him the money. He has a family. He handed over the 20 peso and they’ve been in my ears since then, except for when I dress up, which is rare, and put in a pair of gold earrings of some style.

I’ve decided that I want this ear cuff and a pair of thread earrings with a dangle. I’ve got 7 holes in my left ear from my teenage rebellion days when my mom said, don’t you dare get your ears pierced any more times. I got grounded a week for disobeying and a week for each additional hole in my head that shouldn’t be there. And I didn’t do them all at once. I was grounded a lot. I had 4 in my right, but 2 have closed up. I thought the threads would be cool to thread through my bottom 2 (or 3 in my left ear) holes on each side. I’m all kinds of excited here!

Should we go over how I was grounded a week for each day I didn’t go to church when I was younger too? And we went to church a lot. We’re Pentecostals. Church is open like every day for something or other. I was grounded a lot for that too, all summer one time. (As my mom reads this and says, it wasn’t that much Heather, yes it was mom. LOL)

But, I digress, back to the earrings, that was a wonderful way to start my morning! Thank you Andy and Harry Mason!

It’s a good thing that happened, otherwise I wouldn’t have any blogging material. Nothing really happened yesterday. Ok, I made a supper that tasted like wet sweat socks, that was nice. Better than burning it. Which I’ve done quite a lot the last week. I think something is wrong with my stove. I charcoaled the steak that I cooked on Monday. I always use shake and bake on our steak then pop it in the oven. It was charbroiled. I burned the biscuit pizza concoction I made a few days before that. Everything has been inedible. Last night I decided I’d make the steak like I do chicken for chicken soup, throw it in with the fettucini noodles, make a fettucini sauce, mix it all together, and voila steak fettucini. It sounded so good. I took a bite and it seriously tasted like gym socks. Blech. The kids ate it all up. Jordan went back for thirds. I stopped him. He ate the rest of the pan when I was preoccupied nursing the baby. He’ll eat anything.

So, what do you think? Is it the stove? Or the cook? I vote stove, cuz normally I’m a good cook. Though maybe I get to distracted at dinnertime with the kids and am not paying enough attention to times? Who knows. I better get my act together though before my children waste away to nothing.

Have a wonderful day!

Check out my Giveaway Chick blog for the giveaways that I tweet today!

And if you use Google Friend connect over in the sidebar, will you friend me? I’ll friend ya back!

ETA – because I needed to put this somewhere

I was just reading blogs and somehow came upon a link to this – I’m all for us women, right? We should be equal, equal pay for equal jobs, yes yes yes, I want to vote, I’m good with that. I’m happy that I can either stay at home with my kids or go out and work, whichever I choose, because I’m a woman and I have that choice. No man is going to hold me down, etc etc etc. Power to the women. What have you. I’m good. Really I am.

That being said – it’s a book. Lord have mercy people. I can even get a little of where they are coming from with the whole controlling boyfriend thing, but please, please give me a break with this part -

And once Bella and Edward are married, Bella must actually convince Edward to consummate their union, giving the idea that women are basically driven by hormones and lust while men are calm, cool, and collected. Of course, upon consummation, she is immediately pregnant with an unnatural child, proving that even within the sanctity of marriage sex is generally a bad idea. The birth of that child actually physically kills her; children destroy your life.

The end of Breaking Dawn, the last book, finds Bella happily married and a mother, and there her story apparently ends. She has achieved the highest of her goals at the ripe old age of nineteen, and according to Meyer, there’s nothing left to tell. Once you’re married and have children, you become completely unimportant, with no interesting conflicts left to your life story.

You’re kidding me right? Seriously. You wrote that? And believe it? That’s the message that was trying to be sent with the book? It’s about a vampire and a human who got married. The vampire has supernatural strength. He’s worried he would hurt her. It’s a STORY. And seriously, the underlying message of them having a child together was that children destroy your life? I may start banging my head on my desk over the idiocy of that statement.

And Bella had a huge calling at the end of the book. It was her power that saved everyone. Try looking at it that way. The woman, the central female character in this story, carried everyone on her shoulders (or behind her shield) to save them from the evil men (and woman) that were out to destroy them. The woman had the power! Power to the woman! Can I get a fist raised in the air for that ladies! Do we still call each other ladies? Is that cool to do? Wave your bras around (don’t burn them you might start a fire in your house) for the power that she gave a woman in the STORY.

This is why I will never call myself a feminist. Never. Because the people who call themselves feminists are usually looking for things that aren’t there. (Not all women who call themselves feminists do this, but there are many many who do.) See example above for proof of that. They’ve turned a strong word that used to stand for good into something I don’t want to be. For now, until I find another word, I am a woman. I embrace being a woman. I can do whatever a man can do, but I do not go around looking for hidden meanings, hidden agendas, etc that are not there to prove that the world is out to get women.

I’m sorry, I needed a place to vent.

And I’m sorry to the true feminists who truly do have women’s best interests at heart and don’t go around pulling the “feminist” card in places where it really is not justified, who save the “feminist” card for situations that truly need it, if I offended you in my rant about the other type of feminist.

Now have a great day from a woman who not only wants to be equal, but embraces her feminity, it’s who I am! It’s who you are and you, my fellow woman, are beautiful!

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