The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

This may be unpopular but I really enjoyed The Help, both the book and the movie that followed. I say that as a white woman from the North, so basically I have no lived experience with the people and events that are depicted in the book, so given that handicap, the depiction of deeply embedded racism in the American South rings true with my experience of traveling there and observing the culture rather than being part of it. This book depicts Mississippi in 1933, and revolves more around poverty, although racism is alive and well in the Depression-era South. There are two narrators: Birdy is a single woman moving past marriagable age (early 20's) and Meg, who is an 11 year old consigned to an orphanage even though both her parents are living. Birdy has a good head on her shoulders, but is under employed with her talents wasted, as many women of the era were. She goes to Oxford to ask her sister's in laws for money, only to discover a slowly unfolding disaster there. The characters in this book are vividly drawn and for the most part sympathetic--there are some notable exceptions to that, and while good and evil are maybe a little too characteristically drawn in places, overall the players are nuanced and human. The novel does a great job capturing the plight of women and the many ways they had to adapt, endure, and fight for their space in a societal model designed to limit them. In light of the present unraveling of civil rights, morality and decency, as well as democracy in the United States, there are some important lessons on how to navigate our way back to a functioning community. There’s also thoughtful attention to racial divisions and social hierarchies, and how those systems shaped everyday life.