We Just Can’t Avoid The Help
But there is a difference, I think, between allowing yourself to embrace lives and experiences not ones own and being forced through what is essentially literary waterboarding. Thomas mentions the Secret Life of Bees as a book she enjoyed – I didn’t make it all the way through the book. There was something about being repeatedly plunged into the character of Lily, but being kept arm’s length from August, June, and May was aggravating for me. This didn’t happen when I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird – but perhaps it is because Scout’s world started white and stayed white. She merely observed what was happening most of the book, and did not act as an agent, until far later. In some ways, I found that less condescending. Mockingbird is still problematic, but in some ways, for the same reason I enjoyed it – it used scenes to describe what was happening to the black characters, instead of trying to recreate their voices in an extended, intimate narrative. I remember that my thoughts kept straying while reading the Secret Life of Bees – how Lily’s actions were dangerous, why she was so reckless when the lives of others could be on the line, what was going on in the minds of the other women? I kept drifting away from the character, my own experiences, past readings, and thoughts keeping me from sinking into her. So in that way, Lily’s narrative was like a straight-jacket I couldn’t escape from.
I think that’s my hesitancy about The Help. I have read stories where white authors can convincingly craft characters of color. When they do it well, I forget who is writing. But I generally that is not the case. I used to hate reading Patricia Cornwell writing black characters in her narrative. They were generally jerky side characters, and did things that were inexplicable to me, like “unraveling [their] long dreadlocks.” After I read that line, I spent hours trying to figure out what the hell she was trying to say. Did she mean braids? Unraveling was a weird word. Did she even know the difference between dreads, braids, and twists? It’s these little jarring moments that remind me that a writer is creating a world, and that world may not actually include me. James Patterson is better with Alex Cross. His portrayals were a bit lopsided at times – I remember the whole “blood and bones of my ancestors” speech in one of the early Cross novels that had me also perplexed. The way many white writers discuss and interpret racism is just straight up different – and it’s rarely ever subtle. Whereas reading Benilde Little’s Good Hair, the protagonist is trying to confront her white boss about favoring less seasoned white reporters over her without setting off the angry black woman alarm. Needless to say, she presses her boss, but race doesn’t come up in the actual conversation. Too risky. Just like in real life. Your boss may be racist, but you are the one dealing with the consequences.
This isn’t to say The Help does any of this – I can’t judge a book I haven’t read, full stop.
But I am not really looking forward to the experience. I hope I’m wrong, and we’ve come to a point in America where a white woman can write in a real authentic way about race, and other white women will love it, not because it’s been “properly translated” but because it allows them to access their thoughts and memories of a time in the not-too-distant past. Maybe this is a way of healing. To admit that things were fucked up and white women did their share in perpetuating that while still being oppressed by white men, and as we acknowledge this part of our pasts, we can start shaping our present and correcting for the future.
Then I read “Ten Issues that Tarnish the Help” (complete with citations from the text) and realize that I’m going to need a big bottle of wine for this one.
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