Telling Memories/Southern Women

I really enjoyed this book. I read The Help first and it really got me thinking about this part of our history. Even after the slaves were freed, these women were still slaves, and like everything else, the white women thought it was just wonderful that these black women loved them so much to still work for them.

While reading The Help I found myself wondering what Kathryn Stockett was using as a foundation. Yes, she'd lived in Jackson, MS (I spent my first two years of undergrad in Jackson '65-'67) and yes, The Help was fiction...but what else was there? I was thrilled to read in the acknowledgments "Thank you to Susan Tucker, author of the book Telling Memories Among Southern Women, whose beautiful oral accounts of domestics and white employers took me back to a time and place that is long gone". I immediately went in search of this book. I can tell you it was next to impossible to find the the copies available were priced reflecting the supply and demand, I think the cheapest one I could find was around $90. Fortunately I was able to find a hard-backed copy through my local library, which I devoured. I've now ordered my own copy since evidently more have been published and prices are reasonable. Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South is a collection of interviews done by Susan Tucker, a white archivist and librarian and Mary Yelling, an African-American social worker. They are arranged by topics such as "Giving and Receiving." Each topic is introduced in the context of the times and we read interviews from both the domestics and employers. Each interview has an introduction that sets the context for reading the interview. It gives us an historical, qualitative research-based look at these times in the south. While reading what was said by the women who lived different sides of this social institution we get a glimpse of a former time. If you read and enjoyed The Help but would like more, you'll love this book.

While reading this book, I hated to see the pages nearing the end! How I wanted to be with the author on some of her interviews- extremely interesting and readable!