Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is a young white woman who has just graduated from Ole Miss, and rejoins the social circle in her hometown. All her friends are married with children, and their households are pretty much run by black maids who they treat as less than human.
Skeeter dreams of getting a job as a journalist, or author, in New York, and gets the idea of writing a book on the lives of the black maids. She ropes in two maids, friends Aibileen and Minny, and together they write about their lives, the households they work in, their employers and their cruelties, their wards and the love they get, and the hardships they face doing the most mundane things.
In the background of this is the American Civil rights movement led by Dr. King, which rouses many more maids to share their experiences to be included in the book. The book is finally published, and the fallout upends the lives of several people in the town, both positively and negatively.
The book is well written and well paced. The character sketches are very well done, as are the narrative voices of the storytellers. I should add, “to the best of my knowledge”, since I know little of AAVE.
The primary irritation factor here is the “white saviour” trope. It seems particularly grating that a white woman, for her own selfish reasons, is the one who manages to improve the lives of the “help” in her town. And in a weird meta scenario, the author, Kathryn Stockett, is an affluent white New Yorker writing in an AAVE voice.
The other pain point is that the black folk (save one) are really nice to Skeeter, who has done little to earn their niceness. She is literally going through this exercise for her own profit, promising little to nothing to the black folk, except for a vague promise of giving them a voice, and certain retaliation. That seems particularly unreal.
All told, the book is a pleasant enough read, despite the unbelievable premises and trite cliches.