I liked this novel and look forward to the movie but I did notice it was a little too shiny. But again, it was a novel. It reminded me a little of Sue Monk Kidd’s “A Secret Life of Bees”. It had that same quasi fantasy/ hero worship/ mythical quality attached to the black women. You aren’t going to take away that perspective because it’s a white perspective, it’s how people cope with the atrocities of our history, and it’s better than the historical alternative.

And as far as why certain books are mainstream or not… Seriously? How could you possibly think an autobiographical book on being black in America today would touch a book of fiction that allows us to engage in and deal with our often buried and still sordid and repressed past? Stockett’s book is going to appeal to a much larger audience because it’s fiction, and because it deals with subject matter that still needs to be dealt with. White people (as a whole) have never really been capable of owning what happened– in it’s entirety. Collectively, we were forced to change, kicking and screaming, and then once we were over the hump, we found it too painful to look back. How could we? Could you? Stockett’s novel has everybody coming out okay. These sorts of novels always show the black women as not just heros, but SUPER heros. We need to believe that because we need to believe they were okay back then, that it really wasn’t that bad, that they possessed some sort of absurd strength that made it possible for them to survive. The fact that people just rise (or not) to whatever is put in front of them is not very romantic. YOUR book is not very romantic. If we read your book, about what it’s really like, we can’t have our superhero fantasy. (And really, neither can you.) We all need our myths…

So don’t hate the book and the popularity. Everybody is trying to cope with the horrors of the past. Pain is pain. It’s getting better every day. Stockett’s book isn’t so horrible. It’s just a means to an end and really, it’s a very nice story.

I am in a mixed race marriage and have a mixed race child. I LOVED the movie. I saw black women crying, and talking about the movie afterward, and NOT in anger or sadness. The movie is FICTION. The maids are the heroines. I could feel badly about how the white people are portrayed rejuvenating racist views of all whites as racists, but I just say NO to being made to feel that way. It’s fiction, it’s enjoyable and tells a good story. Do all novels now need to be documentaries? I don’t know about you, but as an academic, I do not get my research from novels, and I do not allow my students to, either.