In this timeless story, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. It is 1962, Mississippi, and while everyone else is settling down Skeeter is searching for more. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a universal tale about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

Buy The Help by Kathryn Stockett here!

Discussion Questions:

1. Who was your favorite character? Why?
2. How much of a person’s character would you say is shaped by the times in which they live?
3. Do you think that had Aibileen stayed working for Miss Elizabeth, that Mae Mobley would have grown up to be racist like her mother? Do you think racism is inherent, or taught?
4. What did you think about Minny’s pie for Miss Hilly? Would you have gone as far as Minny did for revenge?
5. Do you believe that Minny was justified in her distrust of white people?
6. Interview someone you don’t normally talk to. Find out the similarities and differences between the two of you.