Frank Talk About Novel and Film "The Help"

Never one to shy away from conversation, even the heated sort, Frank Talk Multi-Media Network impresario Gilda Rogers of Red Bank will be treading on sensitive territory as she guides and navigates through a discussion she calls "necessary," about the best-selling novel and film The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett.

The event will be held at The Red Bank Eisner Memorial Library on Thursday, August 25 at 7 p.m.

The Help raised controversy when it was first released in 2009 because it was authored by a white woman using, or as some regarded it, abusing the voice of a Southern woman of color to tell the tale. The subject of the story, also a source of conflict, is the relationships between black maids and their white employers, which Rogers called, "the good, the bad and the ugly."

Some voices raised ire over the idea that the book was a stereotype of hapless black folk in need of rescue from white people, but Rogers, showing her hand a bit or igniting the fuel for discussion, regarded this glimpse into certain Southern lifestyles as an attempt to accurately portray the reality of just that, certain Southern lifestyles.

For the record, Rogers also considers the so-called "subservients" in the book as dignified for endeavoring to persevere, to seek better lives despite humiliation and uncommon toil and for courageously telling their stories in the days of segregation and rampant hostility towards blacks. Their accounts are recorded in the story by a southern society girl turned or turning activist who aspires to be a writer and looks and listens to sharpen are skills on the life stories she culls from the once silent working class.

Though not strictly biographical, Stockett, surely divines much from her own Southern upbringing in Jackson, Mississippi. Though not even born until 1969, seven years after the time of the story, Stockett was herself raised by an African American domestic worker spelled by an absentee mother.

And Rogers own personal connection to the book accounts, perhaps for her affinity to the story and her more positive spin on its message and intent.  

“My grandmother worked as a live-in maid for a very wealthy Jewish family in Scarsdale, New York in the ‘60’s,” said Rogers. “She was from a rural area in North Carolina and only had an eighth-grade education. She migrated North in the 1940’s in search of a better life like so many Black people during that time. Through her experiences as a maid, she learned a wealth of knowledge about other cultures, the arts. And she took pride in the job she was doing like what we see in many of the maids in the movie, The Help.”

A group of sorors from Delta Sigma Theta, a national sorority founded at Howard University, that emphasizes the African American community, will also attend The Help discussion. Three of the actresses in the film adaptation are sisters of Delta Sigma Theta.

"The public is invited to join in what is shaping up to be a dynamic discussion about how we view race and class in America," Rogers concluded. "Are we living in a post-racial America? Or is Kathryn Stockett’s book an engaging reminder about race relations in America in the 21st Century?"

Thursday's discussion is free of charge. For additional inquires call 732-747-2572.