HELP ME

 

(Abilene Cooper (above) who claims kathryn stockett used her life to write her bestseller) Millions have read Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel THE HELP with a mixture of fascination and raw, often tearful, emotion. Based on the lives of black servants in America’s Southern states of the Sixties, it is a sharply observed portrait of a racially charged, segregationist world that some might say has barely passed. It has also proved a literary phenomenon, selling five million copies worldwide, 500,000 of them in Britain. ]Disney’s film version of THE HELP i a big hit with the critics. When Abilene Cooper picked up her copy, however, her reaction was rather different. Instead of sympathy for the characters of The Help, there was anger and devastation. As she turned the pages she came to believe that the story at the heart of the book – an unlikely friendship between a white girl and a black maid – was her own. Her life, she believes, has been stolen, without acknowledgment or payment. Certainly the name is hers, although in the book the heroine is spelt Aibileen. The city, Jackson, Mississippi, is correct, and like the characters in The Help, she has spent much of her life working in white households. Intriguingly, these include the household of Kathryn Stockett’s brother and sister-in-law, where she has been a maid and nanny for 12 years. brothers were involved in the civil rights protests and my daddy feared for our lives and my momma walked around praying. The Help compares Aibileen’s skin colour to a cockroach: ‘He black,’ Abilene says of the insect, ‘blacker than me. How can Kathryn live with herself after writing that? How can a person be that cruel? 'I think she is just a racist. She claims she respects black people but she just ran all over me.’ Stockett contends that she modelled Aibileen on a long-dead black maid called Demetrie who worked for the author’s family in Jackson: ‘The Help is purely fiction and the character was loosely inspired by my own relationship with Demetrie.’ In Stockett’s story, the white girl Skeeter persuades Aibileen and 12 out their lives. 

 (Kathryn Stockett has sold more than five million copies of THE HELP. she says, "i don't owe Abilene Cooper one penny.")

 When her book is accepted for publication, she gives them all the proceeds. Stockett, however, is trying to get Abilene’s complaint thrown out of court and insists she isn’t entitled to a penny. Despite going to the trouble of sending the maid the book and the note, the author is airily dismissive of Abilene’s claim. ‘If I add it up, the number of seconds where we’ve seen each other would be maybe ten or 15,’ she says. ‘I met her twice.’ In New York, perhaps, such a response would be acceptable, but not here. It wasn’t until 1994 that Byron de la Beckwith, a Ku Klux Klan member, was jailed for the murder of Medgar Evers – 31 years later. Black maids still raise the children of ‘white folks’ and the two communities live separate lives. This is Mississippi. Time passes slowly, and Abilene believes she has become a victim of the same prejudices that blighted her childhood. READ MORE-