The Insider: A Tulane link to the Oscars

Did you know that The Help, a favorite at Sunday's (Feb. 26) Academy Awards, has a Tulane connection?

Over the years, Susan Tucker, archivist in the Newcomb College Institute, has received a multitude of inquires about her 1988 book containing oral histories of domestic workers and employers in the South. One such inquiry led to the novel that became the blockbuster movie.

Tucker's book, Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South, came about following time she spent as an au pair in France. It was there, as a domestic herself, that she began to consider the questions that led to her book.

With the help of an African American social worker named Mary Yelling, Tucker interviewed some 100 women, in a project not unlike the one undertaken by the movie character “Skeeter.”

When asked about humor in The Help,Tucker said, “the reality really wasn't funny. The first narrative in my book dealt with sexual violence against workers in white homes.”

Other issues not adequately explored in The Help include having few holidays off, no minimum wage laws and payments of only food. “Of course, there were stories told to me that showed great courage, and these do appear in The Help as well,” Tucker said.

Tucker was not consulted for the movie script. “I was hoping that they would ask me or one of the many other researchers on this topic.”

Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, acknowledged Tucker in the novel saying, “Thank you to Susan Tucker ... whose beautiful oral accounts of domestics and white employers took me back to a place that is long gone.”

Tucker praised both Viola Davis, best actress nominee, and Octavia Spencer, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress. “They captured some of the complexity of the work of domestics,” Tucker said. “Their portrayals help us continue this conversation on race, as Kitty Stockett herself has done, too.”

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