Reading

I just finished reading my first book on my iPad.

First I need to tell you again how great my iPad is to use as a reader. Being of a certain age and having had cataract surgery, I need bright light to read comfortably. The iPad solves that problem! Amazing.

And I need to comment on the book, The Help. I thought it was intriguing and moving. Friends have seemed to be less impressed than I. I wonder if that is because the story doesn't seem as real to them as it does to me. I lived in Alabama during the years the events were to have taken place - not far from Jackson,MS. I believe that by the time in which the story was set, few young women had maids that worked for them every day. The story is otherwise believable and important. It asks the reader to examine prejudices and a culture in which we lacked awareness of the oppression suffered by black men and women. The story brings a new awareness of the biases of the community in which I was raised.

A few weeks before my daughter was born, I hired a black woman to help me. In those days women were ordered not to climb stairs for several weeks after delivery. My washer and dryer were down very steep stairs, so I wanted Easter Pearl to come before the baby came to learn the ropes. Then she came a few times afterward to do laundry. On one of those days I made sandwiches for both of us and set the kitchen table for two. I never managed to get her to sit down at that table with me.