A Hinds County, Mississippi Circuit Court Judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Kathryn Stockett as it was filed after the statute of limitations had run out. The suit claims that the author used the likeness and the life story of her brother’s nanny to write The Help without permission. The judge who dismissed the suit did not comment on the claim’s merits.
Ablene Cooper has worked for Kathryn Stockett’s brother and sister-in-law as a nanny for twelve years and she believes that her life has been co-opted without her approval. Taken singly, no one similarity seems to support this argument, but as a whole there is a substantial resemblance between the real woman and the fictional one. They are both nannies who have spent their lives raising the children of white families. They have homophonic names and go by the same nickname, Aibee. Both women have a single gold tooth, wear a gold cross on a chain, and wear wigs during the hottest months of the year. The character in the book lost a son shortly before taking the job as a nanny; Ablene Cooper lost her 18 year old son to leukemia three months before she began working for the Stockett family.
Kathryn Stockett denies the charges, saying that she has only met Ablene briefly on a few occasions and plays down using the nanny’s name by saying, “When I was writing this book, I never thought anyone else would read it so I didn’t get real creative with the names. I just used people I knew.” She further claims that the story is based on her relationship with her own family’s housekeeper from her youth named Demetrie. On publication, the author preemptively sent Ms. Cooper a copy of the book with a note that read, in part, “One of the main characters, and my favorite character, is an African American child carer named Aibileen. Although the spelling is different from yours, and the character was born in 1911, I felt I needed to reach out and tell you that the character isn’t based on you in any way.” Ms. Cooper took the note at face value until she read the book some time later and felt the similarities were too close to be entirely the result of the author’s imagination.
So while the heroine of the book, a young white woman, intends to give a voice to her family’s black servant, the writer of this novel ignores the very same voice. Perhaps Kathryn Stockett should consider eating some (Jim) Crow and making this right.
(While researching this post I discovered an entire blog devoted to critiquing The Help)
