{"id":770037,"date":"2026-05-03T08:22:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T08:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/770037\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T08:22:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T08:22:34","slug":"kathryn-stockett-has-finally-followed-up-the-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/770037\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathryn Stockett Has Finally Followed Up \u2018The Help\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Stockett said, \u201cI was not prepared for a lot of those conversations, but I learned a new language.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">She went on, \u201cIn the beginning, I got defensive. But I learned to say, OK let\u2019s talk about this. Why did it make you uncomfortable? What do you think would be a better option? If I didn\u2019t write this book, would we be having this conversation?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">When she started writing \u201cThe Calamity Club\u201d more than a decade ago, Stockett had no interest in sparking additional controversy. As a result, she said, early drafts were \u201cbland, vanilla flavored,\u201d lacking undertow or guts. She said, \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to write about a place like Mississippi, especially in the 1930s, and not talk racism and sexism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">In 2019, while chipping away at the book, Stockett moved to Bali with her daughter, now 22, and her then-partner, Wyatt Williams. The two met in 2011, a few weeks after Stockett\u2019s divorce was finalized, when Williams profiled her for <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/creativeloafing.com\/content-196401-cover-story---kathryn-stockett-life-in-the-belle\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Creative Loafing<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">In his cover story, \u201cLife in the Belle Jar,\u201d Williams described Stockett\u2019s \u201cpenetrating eyes\u201d and \u201cstriking, fit body\u201d and posed a question: \u201cCan the best-selling, anxious, overrated, vulgar, talented, burned-out author help herself?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Stockett said, \u201cI really didn\u2019t like what he published, or the picture, and I called him after it came out and said, \u2018You need to come over and we need to talk about this.\u2019 And then I just was smitten.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stockett said, \u201cI was not prepared for a lot of those conversations, but I learned a new language.\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":770038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,36029,155799,35173,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,315739,315736,315738,315737,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-770037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-books-and-literature","tag-content-type-personal-profile","tag-kathryn","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-spiegel-grau","tag-stockett","tag-the-calamity-club-book","tag-the-help-book","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116509681128216917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}