Like One of the Family: Domestic Workers, Race, and In/Visibility in The Help

Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 best-selling novel The Help and its subsequent 2011 film center on the experiences of African-American domestic workers living in Jackson, Mississippi. Stockett’s sanitized portrayal of life in the Deep South where black women were charged with rearing white children while concurrently barred from sharing toilets and common eating areas with their employers simultaneously enthralled and disturbed readers and viewers alike. Notably, it is not the domestics themselves who render their tales but rather Eugenia Phelan, a white, twenty-something Mississippian with whom they hesitantly collaborate, who ultimately “voices” their stories of life during the harrowing early days of the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South. Essentially, these stories are articulated through the voice of a white woman; a fact that becomes even more complex when one acknowledges that this fictional tale of the inner life of black maids working in Jackson, Mississippi, one of the most notorious states in regards to racial atrocities suffered during the mid-twentieth century, is rendered through the words of a white southern writer. Despite the book’s positive public reception, its sentimental portrait of the lives of African-American domestic workers is troubling due to its heavy-handed use of dialect and “feel good” message about the admirable interventions of a white protagonist intent on alleviating some suffering while glossing over the vicious attacks on African-Americans during the Civil Rights era.

The issue of visibility/invisibility is central in this text. At its most basic level, the text itself has lacked traditional critical visibility, as, currently, there has been a dearth of academic books focusing on this specific novel, although the novel and subsequent film received much attention in national newspapers and magazines, as well as significant critical debate in a wide variety of online venues.

This collection considers why such sterilized versions of America’s complex racial history resonate so deeply in our contemporary timeframe. Essay topics range from examinations of the laboring black female body to the impact of domestic work on families, both black and white, to explorations of the connections between rhetoric, writing and race. Also included are several comparative pieces that draw connections between Stockett’s work and that of 1940s cartoonist Jackie Ormes, as well as filmic comparisons to Imitation of Life (1934 and 1959) and Black Girl (1966) by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. With a “Preface” by Trudier Harris and the inclusion of several essays previously published in Southern Quarterly and Southern Cultures, this volume represents the first text dedicated solely to Stockett’s wildly popular novel and its subsequent film adaptation.


Fiona Mills is a Lecturer in the Humanities Department at Colby-Sawyer College, USA, and a faculty member in the Social Sciences Department at Proctor Academy, USA. She has taught at various universities including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, Keene State College and Curry College. She received her Ph.D. in African American Literature and Latino/a Literature and Theory from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the co-author of After the Pain: Critical Essays on Gayl Jones and has written several essays in the areas of African American literature, Latino/a literature, Women’s studies, and film criticism.

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Magdalena Bogacka-Rode

Kate Caccavaio

Tikenya Foster-Singletary

Ayesha K. Hardison

Trudier Harris

Megan Hunt

Julie Nakama

Emily Phillips

Kemeshia Randle

Sarah Rude Walker

Kimberly Wallace-Sanders

Tracey L. Walters

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-9022-7

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-9022-9

Release Date: 5th August 2016

Pages: 201

Price: £47.99

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