Like One of the Family : Domestic Workers, Race, and In/Visibility in the Help

Kathryn Stockett's 2009 best-selling novel The Help and its subsequent 2011 film center on the experiences of African-American domestic workers living in Jackson, Mississippi. Stockett's sanitized portrayal of life in the Deep South where black women were charged with rearing white children while concurrently barred from sharing toilets and common eating areas with their employers simultaneously enthralled and disturbed readers and viewers alike. Notably, it is not the domestics themselves who render their tales but rather Eugenia Phelan, a white, twenty-something Mississippian with whom they hesitantly collaborate, who ultimately "voices" their stories of life during the harrowing early days of the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South. Essentially, these stories are articulated through the voice of a white woman; a fact that becomes even more complex when one acknowledges that this fictional tale of the inner life of black maids working in Jackson, Mississippi, one of the most notorious states in regards to racial atrocities suffered during the mid-twentieth century, is rendered through the words of a white southern writer. Despite the book's positive public reception, its sentimental portrait of the lives of African-American domestic workers is troubling due to its heavy-handed use of dialect and "feel good" message about the admirable interventions of a white protagonist intent on alleviating some suffering while glossing over the vicious attacks on African-Americans during the Civil Rights era. The issue of visibility/invisibility is central in this text. At its most basic level, the text itself has lacked traditional critical visibility, as, currently, there has been a dearth of academic books focusing on this specific novel, although the novel and subsequent film received much attention in national newspapers and magazines, as well as significant critical debate in a wide variety of online venues. This collection considers why such sterilized versions of Am