I've been reading
The Help on my iPhone and have to say again how much I love that phone!!! I read Jackie's blog post about it
HERE and decided to try reading it on the phone. Great experience so far. I grew up in the segregated South and remember the separate restrooms, drinking fountains, waiting rooms, and lives. I also remember when things changed and schools were integrated and transitions made. I can't put this book down. Even though it was written by a white woman, she seems to have captured the essence of the experience. I haven't finished it yet but am basing that on what Jackie wrote. What to me might seem accurate might not to someone non-white who lived through it. Empathy can go pretty far but is no substitute for the reality of experience. Unless someone went through it, too, I don't think anyone really knows what it was like to be pregnant and unmarried in 1963 when the best of all available bad choices was to give my baby away. So I don't presume to know how it is to be discriminated against for being gay, black, etc, but do sincerely empathize.
