Our Spring 2014 issue of Southern Cultures takes a critical look at Kathryn Stockett’s bestseller The Help. A literary and film phenomenon, The Help has inspired ongoing debate, some controversy, and many adoring fans. In essays, interviews, photography, and poetry, we explore what makes The Help so provocative and why its themes inspire both serious criticism and real affection.
We welcome Suzanne Jones, Chair of the Department of English at University of Richmond, as our special guest at this event. Professor Jones will read from and discuss her essay on the varied public and scholarly responses to The Help. This will be the third of four special events in the 2013-14 academic year to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of our award-winning quarterly journal.
Suzanne Jones has published articles on women novelists and twentieth-century southern fiction in a variety of journals and collections. She is the author of Race Mixing: Southern Fiction since the Sixties (2004) and the editor of five collections of essays and short stories: Poverty and Progress in the U.S. South since 1920 with Mark Newman (2006), South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture with Sharon Monteith (2002), Writing the Woman Artist: Essays on Poetics, Politics, and Portraiture (1991), Crossing the Color Line: Readings in Black and White (2000), and Growing Up in the South (1991, 2003).