In today’s story reporting Philip Levine’s appointment as Poet Laureate, NPR excerpted a 2005 interview in which Levine said that the Detroit of his youth “was probably half-Southern. And every Sunday morning you could turn on these guys [preachers on the radio]—both white and black—and they would belt out language like I never heard. I loved it.”
Along with the announcement of our new Poet Laureate from half-Southern Detroit, today brought the release of the film adaption of Kathryn Stockett’s best-seller The Help. Between thoughts of a half-Southern Detroit, I tried to imagine what I will say to students in my Southern Literature class when they ask why Stockett’s novel, or an excerpt from it, isn’t on the syllabus. I agree with Janet Maslin’s assertion that “[i]t’s a story that purports to value the maids’ lives while subordinating them to Skeeter and her writing ambitions.”
But the cultural impact of the novel, and now the film as well, tells me that The Help needs to be part of our classroom conversation, even though it won’t be on the syllabus. In David Edelstein’s review of the film on Fresh Air today, he observed that “[s]ome of Stockett’s critics have gone so far as to say she actually romanticizes domestic servitude by depicting black nannies’ genuine love for the white children in their care. They also say the novel is full of stock characters that reinforce classic African-American stereotypes like the ‘sassy’ maid and the shiftless, abusive husband.”
And what is Edelstein’s take on it all? He said: “My view of this controversy is easily stated: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’”
I don’t know either, but I do know that The Help will be part of our classroom conversation—perhaps along with half-Southern Detroit.
Jane Lucas 