The Author of ‘The Help’ Wrote a Second Novel. Yes, Following Up Was Daunting.

Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett
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The Author of ‘The Help’ Wrote a Second Novel. Yes, Following Up Was Daunting.

Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett

Fifteen years after her blockbuster novel “The Help” sparked conversation and criticism for its portrayal of the lives of Black maids in the South, Kathryn Stockett is publishing a new novel.
Set in 1933 in Oxford, Miss., “The Calamity Club” centers on a group of women whose lives intersect as they struggle to get by during the Depression. It will be published in April 2026 by the independent press Spiegel & Grau.
Anticipation for a follow-up from Stockett was high. When it was released in 2009, “The Help” caused a stir with its frank depiction of racial inequality. It went on to sell some 15 million copies, spent more than two years on the New York Times best-seller list, and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie.
In a video interview from her home outside of Natchez, Miss., Stockett admitted that writing a second novel in the long shadow of her debut was daunting.
“The pressure was definitely on,” she said. “The fear of failure, it really weighs on a writer.”
The novel also drew sharp criticism for its portrayal of Black characters and their speech, which some readers and critics found insensitive and offensive. Viola Davis, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film, later said she regretted participating, adding that she felt the film failed to accurately capture the voices and lives of Black women.
In some ways, the debate over “The Help” foreshadowed the “own voices” movement in the literary world, which pushed for more diversity in literature from writers drawing on their own cultural backgrounds.
Stockett said that “The Help” would most likely not have found a publisher in today’s environment, but that she doesn’t regret the way she told the story.
“I doubt that ‘The Help’ would be published today, for the fact that a white woman was writing in the voice of a Black woman,” she said. “I did get a lot of criticism but it didn’t get under my skin, because it started conversations.”
“The Help” was inspired in part by Stockett’s relationship with a woman named Demetrie McLorn, who worked as a maid for her family and died when Stockett was a teenager.
The story, which takes place in Mississippi in the early 1960s, has multiple narrators: a Black woman named Aibileen who works as a nanny and housekeeper for white families, Aibileen’s outspoken friend Minny, and a young white woman, Skeeter, who is appalled by the racism she witnesses.
Stockett’s new novel, set in the segregated South, also engages with the issue of race, but not as directly, Stockett said.
“Race is always in the background,” she said. “It’s probably always going to be in the background of any book I write.”
Stockett first began working on a novel set in Depression-era Mississippi in 2013. She did extensive research into the era, learning about the Farm Act, child labor laws, the eugenics movement and the forced sterilization of women in prison, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic policies.
The story is narrated by two white female characters: an 11-year-old girl who lives in an orphanage and a young woman from the Delta who has come to Oxford in hopes of helping her family through hard times.
In 2020, after writing some 800 pages, Stockett felt stuck, and almost abandoned the book. A friend who had read the manuscript connected her with Julie Grau, co-founder of Spiegel & Grau. They worked for years without a contract, and kept the project quiet. A few years later, they signed a deal. With its release next year, the book will be published simultaneously in Britain by Fig Tree and in Canada by Doubleday Canada.
“There’s something really precious about giving writers the time and the space to execute that follow up,” Grau said. “It was really remarkable and ideal to shield her from the glare.”
Stockett said she was so stunned by the success of her debut that she’s set aside any expectations about how “The Calamity Club” will be received.
“I can’t believe it happened then,” she said, “and I have no idea what's going to happen this time around either.”

 

The New York Times



150 Artists of African Descent Celebrated in ‘Black Paris’ Exhibition at Pompidou Center 

A man photographs the 1965 painting "Marian Anderson" by Beauford Delaney at the Black Paris exhibition which explores the presence and influence of about 150 Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000 at the Pompidou Center, Monday, March 17, 2025 in Paris. (AP)
A man photographs the 1965 painting "Marian Anderson" by Beauford Delaney at the Black Paris exhibition which explores the presence and influence of about 150 Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000 at the Pompidou Center, Monday, March 17, 2025 in Paris. (AP)
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150 Artists of African Descent Celebrated in ‘Black Paris’ Exhibition at Pompidou Center 

A man photographs the 1965 painting "Marian Anderson" by Beauford Delaney at the Black Paris exhibition which explores the presence and influence of about 150 Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000 at the Pompidou Center, Monday, March 17, 2025 in Paris. (AP)
A man photographs the 1965 painting "Marian Anderson" by Beauford Delaney at the Black Paris exhibition which explores the presence and influence of about 150 Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000 at the Pompidou Center, Monday, March 17, 2025 in Paris. (AP)

An unprecedented exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris explores the presence and influence of Black artists in the city from the 1950s to 2000, offering a vibrant immersion in France's cosmopolitan capital and a history of anti-colonial, civil rights struggles.

The “Black Paris” exhibition features the works of about 150 major artists of African descent, many of whom have never or rarely been displayed in France before. Running from March 19 to June 30, it's one of the final shows before the museum closes for a five-year renovation later this year.

Éva Barois De Caevel, associate curator, said that the exhibition is “unprecedented,” with more than 300 paintings and sculptures by artists of various backgrounds.

“Some are African Americans, some are Caribbeans, some are Africans, and some are Afro-descendants,” said Barois De Caevel, adding that the focus of the exhibit is not geography or race, but rather “Black consciousness,” shaped by the history of slavery and experience of racism shared by Black artists.

After World War II, many African American painters, musicians, and intellectuals flocked to Paris, seeking a sense of freedom that they couldn't find in the United States at the time. Barois De Caevel pointed out that for many, Paris represented a break from the racial segregation that they faced back home.

“Many enjoyed being free in the streets of Paris — being able to go out with white women, enter cafes, bars and restaurants, and be treated like white people,” she said.

“But they were not fooled," she added, noting that African American writer James Baldwin "wrote about this early on, that in France, racism is especially targeting Black Africans and Algerians, who were really extremely mistreated. So it’s an ambivalent relationship with Paris.”

The exhibition also shows how many African artists from French colonies — and later former colonies — came to Paris to join a political and intellectual movement fighting for civil rights and racial justice, while others from the Caribbean were supporting independentist movements, which were gaining strength there.

Alicia Knock, curator of the exhibition, praised the ambitious scope of the show, which she described as “an incredible epic of decolonization,” highlighting how Paris city served as both a “lab for Pan-Africanism,” the movement that encouraged solidarity between peoples of African descent, and an “anti-colonial workshop.”

Visitors “will see how these artists contributed to rewriting the history of modernism and postmodernism,” Knock said, and how they “reframed abstraction and surrealism, and at the same time you will also see the Black solidarities that happened at the time.”

“Many of these artists were not only creators, but also cultural ambassadors, teachers, poets, and philosophers,” she added.

For some coming from the US, Paris was also “a gateway to Africa,” Knock said, based on discussions she had with some of the artists' families: “They told us that, in fact, they had come to Paris to go to Africa, and in the end they found Africa in Paris.”

The exhibition also includes installations from four artists chosen to provide contemporary insights, including Shuck One, a Black graffiti and visual artist native of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

In addition, the Pompidou Center has acquired around 40 of the show's artworks, which will remain part of the museum’s collection.

“This is just the beginning,” Knock said. “It’s a baby step for many French institutions, French museums and French universities to start working on these artists, start collecting them, writing about them, preserving their works in their archives and hopefully dedicating a lot of solo shows to many of these artists, because they really deserve it.”