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Kathryn Stockett The Help Analysis

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In the 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation. Mississippi is steeped in African-American history. Unfortunately, a lot of that history is considered some of the darkest times in American history. Society was strictly segregated along racial lines; black and white. Racism has been a long part of human history. Although slavery had ended 100 years earlier, African Americans in Mississippi had been kept in subjugation for decades through a system known as “Jim Crow.” And the social, political, and economic right of blacks were suppressed through violence and other forms of intimidation. Racism seems like an inseparable part of the history of human beings and it has been portrayed as one of the serious problems in every social layer in different forms. Racism has …show more content…

Stockett studied creative writing and English for her undergraduate course from the University of Alabama. Then she moved to New York in order to pursue work in the publishing business. For about nine years she offered her services in marketing and publishing of magazine there and later relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. She shifted her interest to literary writing as she moved back to South. After five years of hard work on her personal writing project she finally had The Help published in 2009. It became one of the most popular books of the summer season. The Help draws special attention to the relationship between whites and their African-American domestic help in South. At first, Stockett was unwilling to write about this relationship as she knew it would be heavily criticized by both reviewers and general readers. It has been favored by the critics as a highly readable and accurate depiction of life in Jackson, Mississippi during the early civil rights

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