I watched the movie “The Help” during my spring break last week. “The Help” is a 2011 drama film portraying the lives of African American maids in Jackson, Mississippi during Civil Rights era (the early 60s). In the movie, Skeeter, a young white woman freshly graduated from Ole Miss, single-handedly brought the racism in the American South to light by writing a book about the lives of these maids referred as “the help”. 

I learned the true meaning of courage from this movie. Skeeter is a courageous young woman, who has defied almost everything – convention, family, and friends, to speak up for the black maids. She has a natural bond and connection with them. At first I thought to myself, maybe because she was raised by a black maid, therefore is emotionally attached to them. Then I heard these words through Minny, a black maid in the movie, that “the children whom she has been raising are growing up to be just like their parents”. So not all the kids raised by black maids are sympathetic to them. Skeeter is one of a kind, and she stands out among the crowd. She is a true hero, because it is not easy to be an outcast among the friends and family.

The black maids have been portrayed often from the point of view of white people, such as in “Gone with the Wind”, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, et al.  But in this movie, black maids are portrayed from their own point of view, therefore providing a real perspective on the suffering and struggling of African American women during that era.

Another thing I learned from this movie is that a writer should write what disturbs him or her most. Although I don’t agree with that completely, I do agree that emotional disturbance creates a passion and an inner drive for a writer to write his or her book.