Kate's Point of View

While reading over lunch, I showed a man I work with a copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey: The River of Doubt. I explained that I was enjoying it and how impressed my dad had been when I said I was reading it. “Yep,” he said. “Teddy Roosevelt is every dad’s favorite president.”

Such a funny comment. But I can see how it might be true. The man was an adventurer, naturalist and great leader. What’s not to like? This book covers a trek Roosevelt took with a team of people exploring the Amazon. The book is well-written, though perhaps a little tough to get into. Once you get hooked in the adventure and mystery that the amazonian jungle has to offer, though, you are hooked. Wonderful read!

I have to be very pointed in how I state this, because little comparison can be made between the late, great Howard Zinn and Kathrynn Stocket’s new book The Help. But, if a comparison can be made, and obviously that is what I am doing, it’s in the perspective of the novel in that she often writes from the less empowered group of characters.

The Help focuses on a time when the civil rights movement was on the front page of every newspaper, even papers published in towns where civil rights was not even remotely welcome. Taking place in Jackson, Mississippi, Stockett utilizes a writing style of which I am growing very bored where she changes the narrator form chapter to chapter, allowing her to offer multiple perspectives. Although she writes from the point of view of several white, female protagonists, she focusses primarily on Skeeter.

A recent graduate of college, Skeeter returns home with her B.S. but not her Mrs., much to the dismay of hr friends and mother. Instead, she wants to put her degree and brain to use in *gasp* a job. While floundering around in life, her eyes are being opened to the civil rights movement and she becomes increasingly aware of the plight of black people. All while black people are working as servants in her family and friends’ homes.

Two of the other dominant narrators of The Help are Aibileen and Minny, two black housemaids who work in the homes of white residents of Jackson. Through their eyes, we are exposed to the real life issues that black people are confronting, particularly when they reside that uncomfortable place of intimate and hired help.

I can make jabs at Stockett’s choice of writing style, but the fact of the matter is I loved this book. I raced through it to completion and would recommend it for anyone!

Howard Zinn is an activist, historian and author who passed away recently. His work “A People’s History of the United States” changed the way I view history and reinforced the experience I had in college being a white girl studying African American Studies. History as we know it is told from the perspective of people who hold power. Therefore, what we know of as history is so so heavily edited that to presume it is true is to be naive.

“Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” documents Zinn’s life from childhood to the 1990s. It details his early years growing up in poverty and working in a shipyard. It shows of his time at war and then later his time protesting war. What makes Zinn so appealing is that he is not a man talking to the people. He truly is a man of the people. And he works hard to maintain that status, always willing to put his name on the line, his job, his status, his reputation.

I am sure there are people out there who are has magnetic and captivating as he, but when I learned a little more than a week ago of Zinn’s death it made my stomach drop. In part it was just me being selfish and wanting so badly to read the next edition of “A People’s History” (he would have had a field day with Bush… though he would have later had equal fun with Obama). But I also know that there is this whole generation who will need him to fill in the gap. To show that what they learn is school is only a small part of the story. That what the read isn’t everything.