The Bitter Seed: Stockett’s Delivery of the Black Reality

Abstract

This article explores the power of Kathryn Stockett’s voice in portraying truth of Black struggle through fiction. By examining the truth behind the lines, the idea of a voice outside of this harsh reality of segregation, offers hope for not only fictional protagonists, but minority voices in society. Black experience is portrayed in the novel in both historical aspects and plot device. Stockett’s work mindful of the Jim Crow Laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and the politics of the North and South, allows her position of White privilege, to shed light on this dark reality in American and worldly history. This debut novel situates Stockett on the periphery of something resonant in years to come.