Apartment 51

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Help is a great book for young adults and mature teenagers. It is education, funny and insightful. It is 444 pages, but a definite page turner. I rated it 5-stars because it is such a great book. It is basically about how unfairly African-Americans were treated in the 1950s and 60s. It changes perspective about every chapter, but it's fairly easy to follow along. It is from the point of view of 3 women from Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's. Aibileen, Minny and Miss Skeeter are the narrators. I thought it was unique that it had more than one narrator and it allowed you to understand the story much better. Aibileen (my favorite character) is a black women who is "the Help" to Miss Leefolt. She is kind, wise and smart. Throughout the story she develops a strong bond between Miss Leefolt's little girl, Mae Mobley. Miss Leefolt is very strict and rather  oblivious to Mae Mobley. She doesn't really know how to raise her, so Aibileen does. Whenever Miss Leefolt tells Mae Mobley she is a bad, ugly, mean girl Aibileen tells her otherwise. She constantly tells her "You is kind. You is special. You is important." On page 296. I couldn't believe that most of the white ladies the black maids worked for wouldn't let them use their same bathrooms, and yet they were raising their kids! Minny is a hot tempered, sassy black women who is best friends with Aibileen. Even though she is a great cook, her big mouth got her fired from her job. Aibileen helps her find another one, waiting on a white women named Miss Celia. Miss Celia is obliviously happy, extremely untidy and a horrible cook. But she treats Minny like no other white lady has treated her before. She acts like they are best friends and asks Minny to give her cooking lessons. Miss Celia wants her husband to think she is doing all the cooking and cleaning herself so she keeps Minny a secret. Minny lives in fear that when he finds out he'll be furious, but when he does he is fine with it. Minny has 5 kids and a husband that often gets drunk and hits her. "This time he beat me stone-cold sober." She says on page 304. I was surprised that she let him do that and didn't just get a divorce, but I guess divorces weren't very common at that time. Miss Skeeter is a single 35-year-old who went to Ole Miss for college and wants to be a journalist. She meets Aibileen after she gets a job at the local newspaper. She has to write answers to questions readers ask about housekeeping. She doesn't know many of the answers so she goes to her best friend's maid, Aibileen. They become friends and Miss Skeeter is horrified to find out how Aibileen and her friends are treated. Overtime Miss Skeeter writes a book about "the help" in Jackson with the help of Aibileen and Minny. They get their friends to tell Miss Skeeter about their life as a black women in the south. It is very hard to convince them to do this, because if they get caught they might go to jail or be beat up to death. But they work hard to get it published. "For four days straight I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom." Skeeter says on page 155. Their hard work pays off when they finally get it published and it becomes a huge hit. It called simply "The Help". Finally everyone can read about how unfairly people treat black women. In the end, Miss Skeeter gets a job as a writer in New York, Minny leaves her husband to find a better life and Aibileen quits her job and decides she can have a fresh start after all. Although it was a tiny bit long, and very sad it was a great book. It was uplifting and inspirational and educational. My favorite quote was on page 397 "Mae Mobley remember what I told her, 'You is kind. You is smart. You is important.' she say." Aibileen is able to teach a little girl that the color of her skin doesn't make her any better than anybody else. Miss Skeeter can do what she loves and gets brave enough to go out and live on her own. Minny decides she doesn't have to deal with someone hurting her all the time and leaves with big dreams in mind. We can all learn from these three people, even if our situations are not as serious. We are all equal and deserve the best life we can possibly create for ourselves. I definitely  recommend this book to teenagers and adults. I think we should all be educated in human rights and this is an entertaining way to learn about it!