Browsing Area Book of the Week, February 25, 2013.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  Library Call Number: PS3619.T636.H45 2009.                                 

 

Excerpted from Kirkus Reviews:      “The relationships between white middle-class women and their black maids in Jackson, Mississippi, circa 1962, reflect larger issues of racial upheaval in…Stockett's ambitious first novel.  …recent Ole Miss graduate Skeeter [Phelan] returns to Jackson longing to be a serious writer. While playing bridge with…friends Hilly and Elizabeth, she asks Elizabeth's seemingly docile maid Aibileen for housekeeping advice to fill the column she's been hired to pen for a local paper. The two women begin what Skeeter considers a semi-friendship, but Aibileen…is careful what she shares…Encouraged by a New York editor, [Skeeter] decides to write a book about the experience of black maids and enlists Aibileen's help. For Skeeter the book is primarily a chance to prove herself as a writer. The stakes are much higher for the black women who put their lives on the line by telling their true stories. Although the exposé is published anonymously, the town's social fabric is permanently torn. Stockett uses telling details to capture the era and does not shy from showing Skeeter's dangerous naiveté. Skeeter's narration is alive with complexity—her loyalty to her traditional Southern mother remains even after she learns why the beloved black maid who raised her has disappeared. In contrast, Stockett never truly gets inside Aibileen and Minnie's heads (a risk the author acknowledges in her postscript). The scenes written in their voices verge on patronizing.”

Library Video of the Week, February 25, 2013.

The Help, starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Bryce Dallas Howard. Directed by Tat Taylor.  Library Call Number: PN1995.9.N4H45 2011.

Kathryn Stockett’s book was on the bestseller list longer than any title since the Da Vinci Code, so it was only natural that it would become a movie.  In 1960s Mississippi, Skeeter, a southern society girl, returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives, and a small Mississippi town, upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen, Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up, to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. The casting of Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard as the southern white women and Tony-Award winning Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in the two major roles of the maids, makes this movie worth seeing.  Spencer went on to win the Critic’s Choice Award, the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award, BAFTA and Oscar for her role in the Help, one of only nine actors in history to win all in a single year.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, February 18, 2013.

Life upon these Shores: Looking at African American History 1513-2008 by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Library Call Number: E185.G27 2011.

          A bold, beautifully illustrated book by the eminent historian uses countless portraits, drawings, pictures and documents to illustrate the long history of African American involvement in the American story, from the first group of “twenty and odd” Angolans captured in African Civil wars and sold into slavery, ending up in 1600’s Jamestown, Virginia; Jean Baptiste Point  DuSable’s founding of an early farm and trading post that would come to be known as Chicago; the paroxysm of violent struggle that wrenched America apart in the Civil War; W.E.B. DuBois’ magnificent photographic essay of blacks in America shown at the Paris Exposition of 1900; Jack Johnson’s extraordinary fights in and out of the ring; the Civil Rights era of the 60’s and 70’s to the recent first  inauguration of President Obama.  Most importantly, Gates notes the hundreds of black Americans who made significant contributions to all aspects of American life and culture.  This is a book of constant struggle, heartbreaking setbacks and triumphant victories. Most importantly, it is an integral part of American history.

Library Video of the Week, February 11, 2013.



Black is…Black Ain’t, a documentary film produced and directed by Marlon T. Riggs. C2004. Library Call Number: E185.625.B5556 2004  (0The second film in recognition of Black History Month.)    

     When Barack Obama began his run for the Presidency in 2007, there was much talk in the African-American community on whether or not he was ”black enough.”  Everyone from Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to the Fox news talking heads had their opinion of a half African, half white American being raised in Kansas and Hawaii by his white mother and grandparents.  But for many white Americans, the debate was mystifying.  What exactly did that mean?  This documentary attempts to explain.  As the film synopsis says:

“American culture has stereotyped black Americans for centuries. Equally devastating, the late Marlon Riggs argued, have been the definitions of ‘blackness’ African Americans impose upon one another which contain and reduce the black experience.  In this film, Riggs meets a cross-section of African Americans grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contradictory definitions of blackness. He shows many who have felt uncomfortable and even silenced within the race because their complexion, class, sexuality, gender or speech has rendered them ‘not black enough,’ or conversely, ‘too black.’”

     Awards:  Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker's Trophy, 1995.