When I finished reading The Help a few months ago, I was happy I had read it, but I wanted more. I suppose this has something to do with my graduate work, but I wanted to read actual stories of actual women who had been domestic workers in the South. At the end of The Help, Kathryn Stockett makes mention of a book she found very helpful when she was writing and thanked the author, Susan Tucker. That book was Telling Memories Among Southern Women. This was the book I wanted.
The book is a compilation of interviews Susan Tucker and an assistant conducted of women who were domestic workers or those who employed them. These are first hand accounts, edited somewhat for length and ease of readability. These are the voices of actual women like those portrayed in The Help. Having read The Help first, I was pleased to see that much of what was Stockett had written was validated by the first person narratives in Telling Memories. There was good and bad, funny and sad, and perspectives of both black and white women. Tucker is white, but her assistant, Mary Yelling, is black. Tucker says Yelling was able to speak to and record the stories of many women who would not otherwise have opened up to her because of racial differences.
The oral narratives are powerful and I recommend this book as supplemental reading material if you read The Help. It may be difficult to find, however. I looked for it unsuccessfully at our local library, but found a copy at BYU. It is available for purchase on Amazon (but not really very cheap). Worth the search, however.
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