Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett is an American novelist. She is known for her 2009 debut novel, The Help, which is about African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
book thoughtful years
I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine. I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book.
book home thinking
I grew up in the 1970s, but I don't think a whole lot had changed from the '60s. Oh, it had changed in the law books - but not in the kitchens of white homes.
book giving missing
Great books give you a feeling that you miss all day, until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again.
book order california
I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.
women book two
Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.
bathroom certainly separate side time
But certainly in my grandmother's time - and when I was growing up, yeah, Demetrie's bathroom was on the side of the house, it was a separate door. Still, to this day, I've never been in that room.
reader second
The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.
staring
I sit in my little office and I feel like I've got all my readers staring at me.
anywhere domestic ticket
Your white uniform as a black domestic was your ticket anywhere in town.
embraced expected families knew medical pay responsibility separate tricky
When Demetrie got sick, we knew it was our responsibility to take care of her and pay her medical bills. And we embraced that. But the tricky part is, like so many families in the South, we also expected her to use a separate bathroom, to use separate utensils.
bathe bathroom children embrace feed love raise silly women
What conflicting ideas that we love and embrace these women, and entrust them to raise our children and to feed us and to bathe us, but we keep something as silly as a bathroom separate.
bathe bathroom children embrace feed love raise silly women
What a dichotomy. What conflicting ideas that we love and embrace these women, and entrust them to raise our children and to feed us and to bathe us, but we keep something as silly as a bathroom separate.
anybody truth
On the one hand I wonder, Was this really my story to tell? On the other hand, I just wanted the story to be told. But the truth is that I didn't think anybody was going to read it.
ask incredibly push stubborn
I'm really incredibly stubborn - you can ask my ex-husband. I think when you tell me 'no', if it's something I really want, I'm just going to push harder.