Kathryn Stockett Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Kathryn Stockett explains the genesis of her first novel, The Help, about three very different women whose lives intersect in 1960s Mississippi.

What was the genesis of the novel?
Growing up in Mississippi, almost every family I knew had a black woman working in their house—cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the white children. That was life in Mississippi. I was young and assumed that’s how most of America lived.

When I moved to New York, though, I realized my “normal” wasn’t quite the same as the rest of America’s. I knew a lot of Southerners in the city, and every now and then we’d talk about what we missed from the South. Inevitably, somebody would start talking about the maid they grew up with, some little thing that made us all remember—Alice’s good hamburgers or riding in the back seat to take Willy May home. Everybody had a story to tell.

Twenty years later, with a million things to do in New York City, there we were still talking about the women who’d raised us in our mama’s kitchens. It was probably on one of those late nights, homesick, when I realized I wanted to write about those relationships from my childhood.

Tell us about your own family maid and your family’s relationship with her.
My grandmother’s maid was named Demetrie. She started working for my ...