McDaniel and McQueen, in their own voices

An item in The Hollywood Reporter, July 31, 2012, noted that "a 1938 copy of Gone With the Wind signed by nearly the entire cast of the film sold for $135,300 ($110,000 plus $25,300 buyer's premium) ...."

Signatures of Hattie McDaniel who played "Mammy" in the movie, and Thelma "Butterfly McQueen," who played, "Prissy," are pictured below.

Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar in 1940 for best supporting actress in Gone With the Wind, which was released in theaters in 1939.  Ms. McDaniel was the first African American actor to win an Oscar. Her acceptance speech was the epitome of dignity and self-possession. Hattie McDaniel's acceptance speech

In 1989, Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen was interviewed about "Prissy," the controversial maidservant she portrayed in Gone With the Wind. In the video, McQueen talks with dignity and frankness about her battle to overcome the toll that Hollywood stereotyping of Black women took on her career and personal life.

The Help: Truth, Fiction, and Authenticity

Welcome guest blogger, Susan Monroe. Susan is coordinator of School 29 Literacy Project, based in New Haven, CT.

Guest Blogger: Susan Monroe

Last week we learned that among the personal affects left by civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks is a six-page essay detailing an attempted rape by a white neighbor. Reportedly, Parks’ family refuted the essay as a “story,” but most, including me, have accepted the tale as plausible, factual.

Handwritten page of Rosa Parks' essay

After reading an excerpt, I was struck by the timeliness of a first person account of a black domestic. However horrific the content, I welcomed this authentic voice speaking from the past, and I accept it as an important artifact in the chronicle of oppression and sexual exploitation that is tied to race and class.

At the time the essay was written, Parks worked as a maid for a white family and like other women in that position was not only vulnerable to social and economic oppression but also to sexual aggression for the sake of survival. The previously unknown account illustrates how the shame of sexual exploitation can suppress self-expression in the form of outrage, dignity and agency, in sum, how shame can suppress retaliation. It seems fair to assume that Parks recorded the incident, held onto the essay, but felt too vulnerable to share it.  Writing out her experience may represent the only form of agency Parks felt was available to her without entrusting herself and the experience to public record. In response to learning about the essay, a friend announced to me,  “I believe Rosa Parks was a writer.”  She was.

Why am I posting this on Now Rise’s book blog? What does all of this have to do with books? Rosa Parks did not write an autobiography but took part in several “as told to” memoirs, most notably Rosa Parks: My Story, 1999, with Jim Haskins, but in just a few days a film based on Kathryn Stockett’s best selling novel, The Help (2009), will open in theaters. The book has been wildly popular but not without controversy.  I imagine the film will be, too. I have read The Help prompted by a desire to take part in the discussion surrounding it, and I eviscerated, er, uh, discussed it for it’s scandalously bad editing that robs Black southern dialect of any hint of poetry, music or suggestion of literacy of its speakers—dialect so badly written and imagined that a reader might not know whether to laugh or cry upon reading it (that is, if she can read it), dialect so badly written that it brings into questions the literacy of the writer, not that of the maids whose  speech patterns she attempts to imitate. Had Stockett or her editors ever read an artistic or poetic attempt at Black dialect?  And to whom is Aibileen speaking? We never know.

The Help

That aside (and that is a major pass), The Help has been chided for its lack of authenticity. In short, socially and politically conscious readers have noted that The Help is yet another book, film, etc., that places a white protagonist, power and privilege, at the center of and as the impetus for black political awakening and change. In this case, Stockett places Skeeter, a young white woman, as civil rights catalyst among a group of black maids in a fictional Mississippi town. In the world of The Help, the civil rights movement lurks murkily in the background although characters live in the midst of Medgar Evers’ bloody murder and the ever-emerging political power of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Somehow the maids that Skeeter engages are not impassioned by these happenings. While others are participating in sit-ins, being arrested and beaten, the maids in this community place their bets on an anonymously published book to bring about change.

With this scenario, Stockett unwittingly captures a complexity and paradox of race relations. The Help robs black women (black people) of their own social and political agency (a common device now practically a trope) while simultaneously servings as a testament to people who allow themselves to be exploited this way. The maids’ complicity in helping Skeeter is, in fact, the most authentic aspect of book. However, from a critical standpoint, I am most concerned with the notion of agency, especially in light of Rosa Parks’ found essay and from the standpoint of African American literary expression. I’ll leave the novel’s treatment of nascent modern feminism on the heels of the civil rights movement for another writer. 

What pains me is this. Aibileen, the maid whose voice begins the novel is a woman known for the power of her prayers, which she composes in a notebook. Aibileen (also the unacknowledged source for a housekeeping column Skeeter is hired to write for a local newspaper) takes the initiative to write out her narrative for her portion of Skeeter’s book. Oddly enough, given her propensity for writing, Aibileen has the most severely written dialogue in the novel. “Law,” she remarks again and again in Stockett’s crude rendering of black speech—that’s  “Lawd” or “Lord” for the rest of us. This treatment of Aibileen’s language is important since it potentially signals how the reader of The Help may perceive her writing. Skeeter says that she cleans up Aibileen’s writing, but does Aibileen write as badly as her speech has been rendered? If so, what are we to make of its value? Her intellect?

But what, you might ask, from the perspective of the novelist could be better than placing a pen in the hands of one of the maids? I would answer not giving that maid something authentic to say. Like Aibileen, Rosa Parks was a writer and recorder of authentic experiences, for instance, in her capacity as secretary to civil rights organizations. Her surviving essay about a near rape has entered and forever redirected the discourse surrounding black servitude by validating what many of have already known to be true. Given this reality, what would a maid in The Help's fictional Jacksonville, Mississippi write about? What would a personal narrative be?

By her own account, Kathryn Stockett had difficulty finding a publisher for The Help; she has said that at least 60 publishers rejected the novel and that those who eventually did publish the book knew nothing about Jim Crow law.

I just wish that if in the time it took to have her novel published Kathryn Stockett had made room for Aibileen to truly speak.

The Help hurts Black women say critics

In this year of 2011 that observes the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War—in which Black people were freed from physical bondage—there is another conflict of widening influence brewing in the land. The conflict can be understood in the mission of a grassroot movement started by colleague of mine that focuses on Black people’s “emotional emancipation” from what she calls “the lie of Black inferiority.” 

A similar movement to expose an inferred premise of Black inferiority surrounds the novel, The Help (2009), as well as its first time author Kathryn Stockett. The movie version of The Help features Black actresses Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer and opens nationwide in early August. Some critics of the book also view the forthcoming movie with skepticism.

The Help 

If you have strong views about The Hel--the book or movie--or issues related to it, you can voice your opinions in an all-day online forum, tomorrow, Saturday, July 16 at the hashtag, #100voicesrespondtothehelp.   

How did the novel come to be the center of this public examination when it was published to high praise?

For example, author Kathryn Stockett’s official website cites a starred review from Library Journal: 

A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family…  . In Stockett's narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. ... Tension pervades the novel as its event are told by [Skeeter, and the two Black women Aibileene and Minnie.”]

and The Help received warm praise from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

 "Powerful...[Stockett's] attention to historical detail, dialect and characterization create a beautiful portrait of a fragmenting world...This heartbreaking story is a stunning debut from a gifted talent."

Despite high praise and its bestselling status, The Help is obviously not without dissenters. They  challenge the novel’s authenticity, the credibility of the author’s research, and more broadly, the marginalization of the Black women by Hollywood.  

Two of the leading critics of The Help appearing in my Twitter timeline recently are Kwanda Scott, (whose Twitter user name is @AmethystNite); on Twitter, she identifies herself as “Black feminist intellectual aspiring to become a wife, mother, and PhD student… .”

The other consistent dissenting voice appearing on my Twitter page identifies herself, appropriately, by the user name @CriticofTheHelp. Her profile reads that she is an “avid reader & one who believes fight for equality is not over.”

@CriticofTheHelp began her intrepid critique of The Help in an open dialogue on Amazon.com about a year ago. She also voices her views at Facebook.com/Boycott the Help and on her blog, acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com. On her blog, she declined an inquiry about revealing her name and asked to be called, “Onyx.”

Besides an apparent affinity for the names of gemstones, Kwanda Scott (@AmethystNite) and Onyx also share a penchant for using social media to voice their dissent about The Help. They connect with others, promote a critical analysis of issues in the novel and those related issues about how minorities are still marginalized in popular media. Tomorrow, Saturday, July 16, they will lead the all-day forum on Twitter inviting comments about The Help at the hashtag, #100voicesrespondtothehelp.   .

In an email to me, “Onyx” said the hope of Saturday’s forum is “to be the critical discussion on The Help that was never held.” The discussion, she said, will include “diverse voices” and people across various professions who have been invited to comment. The conversation will be larger in scope than just about the novel and address issues including “the perception of women and minorities in publishing and film.”

The evidence of how seriously they take the forum is the date they agreed on for the event; July 16 is the birthday of Ida B. Wells, the influential journalist and fiery anti-lynching advocate who campaigned for social justice in public forums and writings such as her investigation of lynching in the South, Red Record. “She’s our inspiration,” Kwanda said.

Using Ida B. Wells as an inspiration, Kwanda and Onyx are 21^st century crusaders for justice waging a campaign decrying the distorted images of Black women and minorities that they feel are revived in The Help.

Relying on an old-school technology—the land line telephone—I asked Kwanda Scott this week what is the danger of a book like The Help?

Lack of Authenticity

After reading the first few pages of The Help, Kwanda said she felt that “it was so jarring.” The dialect lacked authenticity. As an example, she read from the first page of the book: "I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime."  My grandmother did not speak like that, Kwanda said. 

“And I am a migration girl,” Kwanda said, noting the deep roots she has maintained with her family in Alabama and Tennessee, even though her grandmother moved her family from the South to Chicago years ago.  

“This [dialect] is not my auntie or my grandma,” Kwanda said. As I read I thought, “I am the only one who feels this way?”

The Author’s Credibility

Kwanda and others have concerns about the author’s credibility because of factual errors such as a reference in the novel that Mississippi Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was bludgeoned to death; a character who refers to her color as blacker than a roach or distorted dialect.

“Stockett didn’t even care to do a good job at this,” Kwanda said, noting that Stockett admitted that she based some portrayals of the Black women on her family’s maid who has since passes away. However, Kwanda said that Stockett did not seek out the maid’s family in order to make her portrayal true to the departed women’s views of herself. Its been reported that the family of a Black woman whom Stockett used as a model for one of the novel’s characters is suing Stockett. Kwanda voiced concern that Stockett did not do due diligence in researching the novel. She feels the prevailing attitude is that “its “okay” when White people get it wrong when they talk about Black people.

These characters are not inspirational. If we want inspiration, Kwanda said, we can find other books about life in Mississippi. "Read Anne Moody’s memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi; let’s look at Fannie Lou Hamer and get some inspiration if we need inspiration," she said. 

Characters lack complexity

Another issue is complex characters. Kwanda said that Stockett could have grounded the story “in the nuances” of Black culture to capture the complexity of the women she portrayed. Instead, Kwanda balks at the depiction of one of the Black women, Aibileene, who is asked if she knew as a little girl growing up that she would be a maid. Aibileene, played by Viola Davis, answers, “Yes ma’am, I did.” 

Part of the risk with this kind of portrayal suggests “this is how it really was,” and the danger is that Black women can end up taking on these values as a guide to how to live their lives, Kwanda said. She identified this portrayal as a “mammification” of Black women, pointing to sources (The Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory by Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, for example) that explain how this phenomenon has operated in American society.

Indeed, I have to ask why we would accept this subservient domicile attitude celebrated in the fiction and movies by a class and race that benefits from our subservience? It’s a double price to pay. As a friend said to me today, “it’s bad enough when White folks do things at my expense, but then they get the profit from it, as well.”

These distorted perceptions could “enter the public consciousness and counteract [strong positive Black women such as First Lady] Michele Obama, Kwanda said.  

The portrayals smack of patronizing

“There is “an unconscious color-blind ideal” that is at play as well, Kwanda said. The ideal says that if [President] Barack Obama or Oprah made it, then every [Black person] can. “On the surface it sounds inspirational, like people are rooting for us, but only so far as we distance ourselves from other Blacks,” she said.

The persistent online dissent from Kwanda and Onyx hit a nerve. During the last few months, The Help’s producer Michael Barnathan has participated in an exchange with both women on Facebook and Twitter, admitting there were problems in the novel. “We addressed more then (sic) 1 of your concerns in the movie,” Barnathan wrote, “The screenwriter and the actors brought life and context to the movie that is unique and came from within.” Kwanda wondered if the contributions that Viola Davis and Octavia Spenser made to “correct” characterizations would earn them credit alongside screenwriter Kathryn Stockett.

Ultimately, Kwanda said the book is not critical, complex, and she feels that Stockett was given a pass by readers.

She wrote in an email to me, “Central to my issue with The Help is how some white authors retell and therefore reshape words, actions, and motivations of Black women.  Many still believe the symbol of Sojourner Truth told by racist. It is an eery connection and pattern repeating itself [with the reception to The Help."]

Tyler Perry and "For Colored Girls"

Mr. Perry is the most successful black filmmaker ever. His nine pictures — from the comedic romp “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion” to the melodramatic “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” — have brought in over $530 million at the North American box office. He also has an enormous business in stage shows and two television series on TBS.

Read full article by Brooks Barnes printed in the New York Times, October 24, 2010