Kathryn Stockett

Mm-hmm.

I would write something short and simple and not draw the kinds of criticism that some people had for the help.

And what I ended up with was a very vanilla, you know, banana-flavored book.

version of this book that... Because you were trying to write not to offend anybody.

That's right.

And I was trying to write something that had no heart in it.

And what I finally had to admit myself after many years of failure was that you cannot write about Mississippi and certainly not in the 1930s without talking about race, without talking about discrimination and the absurdities of

of some of the rules that were in existence, especially in a place like Mississippi.

I'm of two minds about the help.

I mean, on the one hand...

I get it.

I understand the criticism.

I understand that it put some people off that a white woman was writing a story that they perceived as a black woman's story.

To tell.

But the truth is, it was the story that...

that I needed to write to answer a lot of the questions that I had about my childhood and about where I came from and about the things that I was taught.

And I understand the criticism, but it was a story that just came out of me.

And I don't know how to quiet the voices in my head.

We write what we write.

Because we have to.