I used to work at a bookstore and Katheryn Stockett's The Help was a bestseller or "hot read" for a long, long time. I picked it up, saw it was about African-American servants being helped by a white woman, written by a white woman, and never picked it up again. Now it's been made into a movie so the sales are going to spike yet again. Mehhhh.
Here's why I won't read the book.
It's not just because she's white. I do think white people can write about people of color (POC) because...
(a) most of us have people of color in our reality and we should reflect that;
(b) since reality hasn't been reflected historically, why not balance things out and have even more people of color in our books than might be in our reality?
(c) I totally don't write about my reality (vomit);
(d) among white people who are published (not moi), they should be making the environment more POC-friendly, so that POC authors and by extension POC characters are more likely to become mainstream. Because right now the belief is if there's a POC on the cover, a white person won't be interested in the book...well... unless he's an Injun from the Hunk tribe.
(One of these Lakota is not like the other...)
Maybe an established white author, who's always had white protagonists, can "get away with" an African-American heroine--so she should try! She might even, like Justine Labalestier, manage to prevent her publisher from whitewashing her cover.
But if a white person is going to write about les peoples of color, they've got a responsibility to put in WORK. As one of the commenters said on this very good blog about race*:
SF writers often commit themselves to exhaustive research on the physics of space travel or time paradoxes, historical fiction writers pore over historical documents about the chose period in time, why should writing about a culture and a people unfamiliar to you not warrant the same amount of research? It’s like Tolkein creating several functioning languages with staggering attention to morphology, phonology, syntax, etc.; and yet seeing no problem with dehumanizing the faceless, evil masses of the East in contrast to his noble “Men of the West.”Judging by the next quote, sounds like Stockett had just reached Racism 101 and was so excited she had to write a book about it: [she said in interview]
"Frankly, I didn't even question the situation down there [in Mississippi]. It was just life, and I figured that's how the whole world lived. It wasn't until I was about 30 years old that I started looking back on it."But instead of writing about a white protagonist who makes the journey she has, she wrote about a Nice White Lady who returns to her hometown all politically conscious and modern (yes, like the heroines of the historical romances we read, except this isn't a romance novel) and frees the voices of the black maids by writing down their stories.
That's the problem I have with this book, without even reading it.
The theme of the book is about giving a voice to those who are don't have a voice. About giving power to those who don't have power. And it's a white woman who does it. Whereas we know, it is an historical fact of the civil rights movement, that African-Americans TOOK that power themselves, from reluctant and/or hostile hands, by marching/fighting/protesting/being beaten/mauled by dogs/hosed/imprisoned/bombed/threatened/tortured and by telling their OWN F***ING STORIES.
The symbolism here is just too awful. White woman as spokeperson for mute black women.
Could these stories not have been told to a black woman? It's not like there weren't university educated black people in the 1960s. I'm researching the 1919s right now and there were African-Americans, women too, in the south, attending university then--you'd be surprised. Why is a white woman necessary to tell this story, other than to make this book accessible to white people?
Fail. Fail fail fail. FAIL! Baby cheeses, that is fail.
Let us turn again to the aforementioned blog:
...while The Help is about people who risk their lives to challenge the status quo of their day, the book itself does very little to challenge the status quo of its own day. A particular norm of today that The Help fails to challenge, and instead reinforces, is the tendency of white consumers to favor racially themed entertainment that makes them feel good about the victims of white supremacy, and about the few good white people who resisted it. Ultimately, such entertainment -- from Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawkshank Redemption to Gran Torino and The Blind Side, and many, many more -- also makes white audience members feel good about themselves, which they do when they distinguish themselves from the bad, racist white characters, and when they feel good about the connections that they imagine they’re making with the noble, forgiving, goodhearted characters of color.Yes, let us think about That Racism That Existed In That Evil South (there was no racism in the North in those days, no, or Canada, or Britain, or Australia, or anywhere twang-free) and be glad we live in a time when... well... ahem... cough cough... most white people only buy books about white protagonists. (Except when Oprah touts them, thank heaven for her. Seriously. A lot of Toni Morrison sold in North America because of her.)
So here's my thing. If I'm going to buy a book by a white author about POC I'm going to vet it carefully. Otherwise, if I'm buying a book about an African character, I look for an author from that country, and preferably a person of color. If I'm looking for a novel that takes place in India, I prefer an Indian author, preferably still a patriot, though that's harder to find. And books about African-Americans by African-American authors, etc.
This is for two very good reasons:
#1 Very Good Reason: I am going to get a more accurate representation of that culture.
#2 Very Good Reason: It supports POC writers, which shows publishers (and in the case of movies, producers) that the public IS interested in stories by POC thereby encouraging them to publish MORE stories by people of color in the future. Which is why, given two equally good books about, say, black maids in Mississippi, I should still buy the one written by an African-American author. Bahhhh I'd even buy the one by the black woman if it was "less good." But since I've got the likes of women like Toni Morrison on my bookshelf, this really isn't a worry.
I was going to post a list of recommends, but it's getting too long I muuuust sleeeeep. So latah.
ZOMGs it's hard to write a serious post when the final dance scene of Staying Alive is on. If racism is now ruining your day, watch this:
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* No longer updated, but macon leaves it up so people can still read it, and the comments. Very much worth your time.
