The Help brought me to this book. An edited collection of first person stories from both the black and white sides of the southern experience of life with domestic servants.
Like life in general this book was full of every imaginary take on domestic servility. Servants that hated white employers, were approached or molested by their white male employers, whites who didn't see anything wrong with the frighteningly low wages paid to servants, didn't see the truth that the servants felt obligated to agree to anything their white employers suggested, the trap that this whole position was. I find the explanations for the white employers ignorance of the black servants situations revealing and completely understandable. I can see how some white employers would have to live in ignorance, if only to be able to live with themselves.
This reminds me of the book American Pictures by Jacob Holdt. In his travels through the southern United States in the same time frame that these interviews were taken, Mr. Holdt found what he thought of as remnants of the Master/Slave environment. He found whites with serious alcohol problems and little soul, blacks with problems getting ahead, as if they didn't know how to grow or change with the times.
Both books wrote of changes and over twenty years has passed since both transpired, plus I lived in the deep south for ten years and witnessed a different world. I expect that times have changed for both groups by now but it is extremely interesting to read these edited first person accounts of life as they knew it. A little bit of history is always a good thing and so very important to our future as healthy human beings. I wish everyone could read both of these books and learn of a better way to live and think. I wish all of us could be forced to address our inner bigots.
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