I have read The Help, and it completely ignored the problem of sexual harassment of the black servants. One of the black maids in question has a daughter that is so light she can pass for white, but the question of how the woman got this child is passed over in a disappointing manner.

It did present the black women as being victims of mistreatment and low pay and having to do a lot of gross, difficult work while being treated without respect.

SPOILER ALERT One of the chief storylines in the book is that one of the black maids is not allowed to use the bathroom in the house—they actually build her one outside—because her employer’s friend insists that “Negro diseases” are spread through the urine. Translation: she doesn’t want her bare bottom sitting on the same surface that a black woman’s bare bottom sat on. This is done in a very humiliating way to the maid.

There is a brief discussion of the difficulty that blacks have in getting an education in general, but it’s not the center of the story.