Adri's favorite book

My niece, Adri, invited me to a book talk and author signing last week at Barnes and Noble. Adri is in a group that attempts to show leadership at her Edina Middle School regarding issues of race and culture. Adri's language arts teacher recommended the book, The Help. Adri read the book and loved it. The author, Kathryn Stockton, is signing Adri's book in the picture. The book has been on the New York Times best seller list for over a year. It is the story of a group of black maids working for middle class white families in a Mississippi town in the early 1960's, just before the Civil Rights movement.

Stockton grew up in Mississippi in the 70's in a family that had a black maid. She moved to New York City after graduating from college and worked in advertising by day and wrote this book by night.

Adri and I got to Barnes and Noble an hour early thinking we would have no trouble getting a seat. That didn't work out so well. There were at least 300 in the room and as the hour wait progressed another 100+ people arrived. Talk about standing room only! The crowd was predominately women, white women, although a few black women were also in the crowd. I watched as a young black woman and her mother had Ms. Stockton sign their books. They left the signing table and I overheard the young woman say to her mother; "I love her so much." Adri said the same thing to me after she heard the talk. These two girls were the youngest I could see in the crowd.

Kathryn received 60 rejections before her book was published. She worked on the book for five years. She told us the story about the cover of the book, explaining it had no significance at all. Her favorite cover option was a photograph of a black adult woman's hand and a tiny white baby hand gently touching each other. Her publisher told her that such a cover would never work because people would assume the book about race. Americans he said, do not like to talk about race. One woman who edited her book Stockton told us had completely re-written the black English dialect spoken by the maids into a standard white dialect.

The author surprised the audience by telling us her book was going to be made into a movie by Stephen Spielberg and the movie begins filming in July. I downloaded the book onto my kindle when I got home and I now understand why so many people turned out to see this amazing writer. Of course I was ready to read it on Adri's recommendation alone.

I meant to tell Adri that our family had a tradition of being maids. My Scottish grandmother came to Canada in the early 1920's and spent her early years as a domestic for a wealthy American family in the Twin Cities. After my grandmother had children she went to work in a foundry for the rest of her working life. I remember how she could endlessly recite Robert Burns poetry from memory. She would tell me she was always number one in her class but she had to go to work to help support her family. My mother, who dreamed of being a nurse, worked all her life as a cleaning lady and she was so ashamed of it that her daughters were instructed never to let anybody know this. Adri wants to be a doctor. The Scottish grandmas would be (are) very proud of her and so is her Aunt Jeanne. And not just because she wants to be a doctor, but because Adri will be one great doctor if at age 15 she is reading books such as The Help.