Already selected as a Book of the Year by the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, USA Today called “The Help” “thought-provoking...one of the best debut novels of the year."
Giving it a “starred review,” Publishers Weekly raved, “What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel…”
And Library Journal concluded, “… 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… [so that] readers in Jackson and beyond [will] question their own discrimination and intolerance in the past and present.”
On her website, the author explains, “I don't presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially the 1960s. I don't think it is something any white woman, on the other end of a black woman's paycheck, could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.”
Faculty at both schools are already excited about “The Help.”
At CR, one faculty member said the book “…ties into the work we've been doing…about the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides. And at HSU, “The Help” will be part of the Communications, English, Sociology and Women's Studies curriculum “…to ‘get at’ issues of power and social science.”
In addition, both schools will host one-unit book discussion classes and events, including a possible author’s visit, throughout the academic year. For more information about the CR/HSU Book of the Year program, visithttp://www.redwoods.edu/events/book-year/ or http://library.humboldt.edu/blogs/help/.
For more information, contact the HSU English Department at 707-826-3758 or englasa@humboldt.edu or at CR, Professor Vinnie Peloso at 707-476-4565 or vinnie-peloso@redwoods.edu.