Kathryn Stockett
1 book analyzed
Biography
Kathryn Stockett (b. 1969) grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, raised in part by a Black domestic worker named Demetrie McLorn, who worked for Stockett's family for thirty-two years. Stockett moved to New York after college and wrote The Help over five years, receiving sixty rejection letters before publication. The novel became a massive bestseller (over five million copies) and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 2011. Stockett has been candid about the fact that she never asked Demetrie what she really thought about working for a white family, and that the novel is partly an attempt to imagine that answer. Ablene Cooper, a Black woman who worked as a maid for Stockett's brother, sued Stockett for using her name and likeness for Aibileen — the suit was dismissed on statute-of-limitations grounds but added another layer to the novel's questions about who owns whose story.