Come Writers and Critics who Prophecy with Your Pens

One of my mentors warned me of the perils of following my passions with reckless abandon because passion is, by nature, seductively bi-polar. Perfecting that invention bound to revolutionize the digital world will make the inventor's day go by faster, as he spends his nights burning the midnight oil. My mentor offered this wisdom not to discourage me from recognizing and working towards my passions, but to recognize how my passions work to distract me from my larger life goals.

Case in point.

Three of my passions in life are post-World War II American History, women's labor history, and domestic fiction. I can and will talk anyone's ear off about Johnson's War on Poverty, Le Leche League feminists, and Bronte fiction. In college I followed these passions to degrees in American History, English Literature, and Women's Studies. While my passions relate to each other, I was glad to study them separably to avoid sensory overload, i.e burnout. 

This equal, but separated system worked well for me until 3 days ago when I started reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. The novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in my favorite year of all times: 1963. In 1963 I was negative 26, so I learned to experience  SCLC sit-ins, the March on Washington, Bob Dylan's rise to fame, and Kennedy's assassination either vicariously or through history books. Told through the eyes of three narrators: Skeeter, a 23 year old 5'11 recent English literature graduate forced to move home to Mississippi after failing to secure either a husband or a job during her 4 years at Ole Miss, Aibileen, a fifty something black maid who raises white babies after her only son's suspicious death, and Hilly, a thirty-five year old mother of seven who don't take no sass from her employees because she takes so much from her husband, these women risk everything to give the help a voice. 

Needless to say by page 12 I was hooked. I read the entire 500 plus page novel in 3 days. Three days where I only changed out of my pajamas to go to church or for a run. Three days I should have spent packing, or hanging out with friends one more time before I move 5 hours away from them. 

See the problem with passions is that quickly become all consuming and turn into obsessions. I was so consumed with oh-my-gosh-the-only-thing-that-separates-Skeeter-from-me-is-40 years-and frizzy hair that I gladly overlooked Stockett's butchery of southern dialect and glorification of the Civil Rights movement. 

Needless to say, by 8:18am this morning when I finished the novel I felt like that kid whose mom let them eat a Reese's peanut butter and cheesecake sundae so they would think twice before eating them together again. But like most kids, the thinking tends to last only as long as my stomachache. The Help did not rid me of my passions, but did help me think of my passions in new and interesting ways, albeit, with some reckless abandon.