Author Kathryn Stockett Faces the Ghosts of Mississippi's Past in Her Novel and New Movie, THE HELP. By Marci Miller
Born and raised in Mississippi, Kathryn Stockett, author of the New York Times best-selling novel, THE HELP, drew her story from her own childhood and experiences with Demitri, her grandmother's beloved maid. As Kathryn was raised by a single mother, Demitri often stepped in to give Kathryn the attention and affirmation she desperately needed. Although Kathryn was raised in the seventies, a later era from when THE HELP takes place, many remnants of the segregated South remained; including an outside bathroom that Kathryn didn't realize was to only be used by Demitri. Now living in Atlanta, Kathryn Stockett is experiencing a whirlwind of success as her novel makes its way to the big screen this August. We recently had a chance to sit down with her to talk about the story behind THE HELP.
Demetri worked for my grandmother for 32 years, so there was a very hierarchal set up there. Demetri was an amazing woman, she ran a tight ship. She grew up in Shanghai, so she understood class and boundaries. I had a very unique relationship with her because my mom worked, she was single and I would get dumped off at my grandmother's house after school. My brothers and sisters were older, so it would be me and Demetri in the house and she would stand me in front of this big wardrobe mirror, it was in the kitchen, and that was where Demetri always was...in that kitchen. And she would say "Look at you, you are so beautiful." And I was not. I was the dorkiest looking four-eyed kid. I was strangely short and I never brushed my teeth. But she would just say, "Look at yourself, you're worth something." And that was the message that kept running in my head when I first started writing in her voice. She had no children of her own, but if you asked her how many children she had, she would say three; myself, my brother and my sister. She was just an amazing, generous person.
What do you think is the moral of this story? Look, you'll never read anything that I write that has a moral to it. If ya'll know me, I am a dirty, sick-minded...it's not my role in life to try to teach anybody a lesson. If you've all known the routes that I've taken in life, the wrong turns I've made...and I don't want to read something where someone is trying to teach me a lesson. I'm just glad that people are talking about this topic of race and relationships and bringing up a part of history that seems to have somehow been forgotten. And I never wanted to try to act like I was representing the entire black race of Mississippi in 1963. It was a very small population; a bubble that was affected by class. I wanted it to be on paper and I wanted people to look back on it and think about it and see how ridiculous some of those rules were.
Do you think Hilly ever learned her lesson when it came to integration? No. I think Hilly is going to be fighting that demon her entire life until she dies. She's that self-centered. She is just sick. And we know people really exist like that in the world. They are not everywhere. They are not as common as they are in literature and movies, but those are the people that always want to create the conflict. They are so immersed in what they believe in.
When you were writing the book, did you ever think that it would be as popular as it has become? I couldn't get anybody to read it! I had 60 rejections. Number 61 was the agent that finally took me.
How did you end up in Atlanta? I was in New York for 16 years. I was in magazine publishing and one day in our apartment on the Upper West Side, my daughter Lila was in the bathtub, the nanny was reaching over giving her a bath, I'm at the sink and my husband is on the toilet...all four us in that same room. And I was like we have to get a bigger apartment; we have to get a second bathroom. And so we examined our situation and decided that if we needed to have a bit more room, we needed to move outside of New York City. So we moved to Atlanta and funny enough, we bought a house where we are all still using the same bathroom. Except now he's using the bathroom down the street (Kathryn disclosed during the interview that she and her husband have recently divorced).
So much of "The Help"centers on the black maids not using the same bathroom as their white employers, is that how it really was? In my grandmother's house, there was a door out on the side of the house. I never wondered what it was. I thought it was a storeroom or something. I still to this day have never been in there. I know I should go in there and face my demons. I guess that's why I'm sensitive to that phrase "like family" (referring to her maid as being part of the family) because that is absolutely what I thought when I started writing this story. Then I realized that Demitri knew everything about us, but we knew so little about her. We knew she went to church, we knew where she bought her groceries, but we really didn't know ... like the line that director Tate Taylor put in the movie, "Nobody knows what it feels like to be me." I wish I wrote that line.
In Theatres August 10. Click here to visit the film's website. |
Explain your relationship to your "help" growing up in Mississippi.
