'The Help' author Kathryn Stockett's new novel inspired by photograph
New York Post • • entertainment
Key Points:
- Kathryn Stockett’s new novel, “The Calamity Club,” follows 11-year-old Meg, an orphan in Depression-era Mississippi who faces harsh realities including being sent to work in Biloxi canneries once deemed unadoptable.
- The story is inspired by a photograph of a young oyster shucker girl and explores Mississippi’s grim history, including sterilization laws targeting women labeled as "undesirables."
- The novel highlights systemic prejudices against women and marginalized groups, reflecting on issues like forced sterilization, child labor, and social hypocrisy in the segregated South.
- Stockett’s fictional orphanage setting, though invented, is rooted in historical events such as the Great Flood of 1927 and the Great Depression, raising questions about the fate of children without family support during that era.
- Drawing from her own Mississippi upbringing, Stockett infuses the novel with emotional depth, portraying the struggles of women and children in a society marked by cruelty and injustice.
