8.14.2011

I




The letter I

I is kind.
I is smart.
I is important.

I will not pretend that Hollywood should be the one to provide history. But if you read "The Help" and decided it was a movie you wanted to spend your money on, I'm right there with you. After grad school, this was the first "for pleasure" book I read, followed by "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks." (side note - I have neither cable nor DVR, so Oprah did not recommend these books to me. I'm pretty sure Amazon did.) I love to read so much that I did not allow myself to read while I was in school, because I get all crazy and involved in the book I'm reading and have to finish it RIGHT NOW. So I will stay up all night to finish it, and well... I just couldn't do that while I was in school because I had other things to work on. ("other things on which to work" if you're particular about ending sentences with a preposition.) "The Help" movie was very well done - they did great in casting and did an excellent job of portraying all the important parts.

My main point is that both of these books really got me thinking. I find the civil rights stories so fascinating because it wasn't that long ago. There are still people living that can tell stories about either employing a black maid or being raised by one. Or people that remember having a "white" grocery store and a "colored" grocery store. People who remember hospitals that only served whites and when textbooks couldn't be shared across races. And I would love to know their stories. Not just the horrible, disgusting, painful stories of injustice, but also the ones that show the love... like a maid that told a chubby, plain little girl every day - "You is kind. You is smart. You is important." Because I have no doubt there are some beautiful stories among the rubble.

Besides that, on the shallow side of things - I want to start dressing like I am a housewife from back in the day. I plan on starting with this dress (but in red) and my pearls:

2 comments:

Knitrageous said...

Where I live there is still a 'black' cemetery and the other cemetery. There was at one time a 'black' school where auto and cosmo are housed now and there is a wall, still standing, that supposedly at one time divided the town.

Pat said...

It would be wonderful to read stories that aren't colored (no pun intended) by PC, but just tell the story.
As for the dress--you'd look great in it! Would you wear heels as well? TV used to depict women that way in the 50s. My mom wore a skirt & blouse most of the time...with loafers or flats. There's something very feminine therein...