Skeeter *Extra Post*

I think it's good that Skeeter doesn't want to be like her friends and family. She should get a job doing something she loves unlike Hilly and Elizabeth who just sit at home. Skeeter got a letter from the publishing company she want to work for and it said she needed more practice before they would hire her. She was so excited that she went out and got a job immediately writing a column in the Jackson newspaper about cleaning. Even though she doesn't know anything about how to clean and take care of a house properly she is still confident that she can get help, write the column properly and be successful, and finally get a job editing for the publishing company.

The Help *Book Recommendation*

I would recommend reading The Help because it is a wonderful story about how black maids in the 60's were viewed and treated. Aibileen and Minny are two black maids who work for white families and are maid very little to watch their children, clean their houses, cook, and tend to guests. Skeeter, a white single woman living with her parents after getting out of collage, sees black maids differently than her friends and family. She was raised by her black maid, Constantine. Skeeter doesn't want to spend her days being a stay at home mom and let a man go to work, she wants a job as a writer. In order to do that, she teams up with Aibileen and Minny to hear their adventures of raising different white children and how they put up with their mothers. But once people hear that two black women are writing a book and trying to get it published, will it be the end of their attempt to show people how cruel the white women they work for really are? Or will they finally be heard with the help of Skeeter?

The Help *Characters*

Aibileen Clark is a colored maid who has worked her whole life taking care of white women's children and house. She lost her only son, Treelore, which sent her into a great depression. The only person who took care of the single woman was Minny Jackson, Aibileen's best friend who worked for Hilly Holbrooke's mother. Mrs. Hilly is conceited and spread rumors about Minny so that other women wouldn't hire her after she sent her mother to a nursing home. Everyone heard these rumors besides Celia Foote, a cheerful and peppy white woman recently married to Hilly's ex boyfriend. Eugenia, "Skeeter", is a tall, single, educated white woman who has a different view on black maids than her friends Elizabeth and Hilly do. She was raised by her maid, Constantine, who was fired while she was away at college. While Skeeter's friends are off building outside bathrooms for the maids, she is helping Aibileen and Minny get a book published that shows the everyday tragedies that go on in a colored maids work hours.

Bathroom

I think it's horrible that Mrs. Hilly is so rude to the help. Even if they are their maids they are still taking care of their children and their household. Now she doesn't even think they should be using the same bathroom as them! In my opinion, it's fine if she wants to build another bathroom for her maid to use outside, but to try to get the law involved saying everyone should do that is unacceptable.

The Help *Setting*

In The Help by Kathryn Stockett, it takes place in Jackson, Mississippi. It takes place when segregation was popular. This story follows a few "colored" maids through their everyday lives tending to white families needs. The story takes you through the backstories of the maids and where they live when they are not working. They don't get treated fairly and are not paid much at all (only about $1 an hour).