Log #3

What I’ve read in these two weeks was mainly about the process of Skeeter interviewing the life of black maids. It was actually my favorite part of the plot, because it conveyed the idea that those black maids actually liked to do some reading and were much more intelligent than we could ever imagine. Since Aibileen, the black maid, could not answer the interviewed questions open-mindedly although she thought she was ready to talk, she chose to write her own true story instead of being interviewed. However, most important of all, if all these true story needed to be published, the only way to do so was to place them on the lips of a white woman because everything was restricted to colored people. Throughout the interview, Aibileen's use of her own writing allowed her more control over her narrative; she wasn’t just feeding Skeeter answers, she was directing the conversation as well. And the reason why Skeeter was willing to interview maids was that she wanted to show the maid's side of things, which perhaps would change public opinions around issues of race. A black woman who especially worked as a maid and had little formal education had little chance of publishing a book of her own. Skeeter realized that Aibileen was extremely intelligent and thoughtful, and contributed to Aibileen's writing career by getting books for her from the white library; this broke yet another rule around race, but Skeeter had stopped caring.

        Seen from what I mentioned above, those were all true incidents happening to every black maid. They suffered in the fear that they could be fired even due to the wrong order of silverwares. As far as I’m concerned, the action of Skeeter should be praised publicly nowadays because if she didn’t write down everything they had experienced, the situation toward colored ones would be much more serious. However, although she stood up for those black maids, she found out that her relationship with other white people started to change on the basis of her new closeness with Aibileen. Looking at her friends through Aibileen's eyes, she started to see how icy and cruel her friends were.