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**Oprah Winfrey** (0:00)
The criticism from The Help did shape how you started to approach this story and write this story.

**Kathryn Stockett** (0:09)
After many starts writing this story, I got fired. My publisher fired me because it had taken me so long.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:19)
Because you were still operating out of fear.

**Kathryn Stockett** (0:21)
Yeah, there's something, I guess, scrappy inside of me that, you know, if you kick me when I'm down, I'm going to come out of that a little bit wiser and a little bit braver.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:33)
You're still going to write the book even though you don't have a contract.

**Kathryn Stockett** (0:36)
I don't give up easily. I got to say, I'm really stubborn. So when I got fired, it kind of put a fire under my ass to prove them wrong.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:47)
This success of this book is going to be the best revenge for the publisher that fired you. I can't even believe it.

**Kathryn Stockett** (0:52)
It was fun to write.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:54)
It was fun to write.

**Kathryn Stockett** (0:55)
It was. It was painful. It was fun.

**Oprah Winfrey** (1:01)
Hey, everybody, thanks for stopping by The Oprah Podcast. A warm welcome to you all. I know millions of you read The Help, Kathryn Stockett's 2009 debut novel, which became a global phenomenon, selling over 15 million copies. Not many authors get to say that in their lifetime, not in three lifetimes.
I was able to help based on the book. And now Kathryn Stockett's long-awaited second novel, The Calamity Club, is finally here. And I know so many of you are going to devour this book. And it's already, I can tell you, runaway bestseller. I knew that that was going to happen. And I'm thrilled to be sitting on my front porch with the author, Kathryn Stockett. I know you prefer everyone call you Kitty. So I will do the same. Kitty, welcome. So glad to be with you.

**Kathryn Stockett** (1:57)
So glad to be here.

**Oprah Winfrey** (1:58)
Let me just say I fell in love with this coming of age story. And this is what I realized when I read this. I thought all of my favorite books are coming of age stories, beginning with Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, of course, Sealy in the color purple.
Maya Angelou's story is a coming of age story. I know why the caged bird sings. And of course, To Kill a Mockingbird and Scout. There's something about a young girl's voice, coming of age, that speaks to me so deeply, because I was a southern girl coming of age. And obviously, because you have done such an incredible job with this book, that also spoke to you. This is a story of a group of bold, unbreakable women who overcome hardships to reclaim their lives. The love between them was just, I was crying one minute and laughing really out loud to myself, the next, and then cheering. I think it's both heartbreaking and it's also hilarious at the same time. So, you've said writing a second novel in the shadow of The Help was daunting.

**Kathryn Stockett** (3:00)
You know, living life and raising my daughter as a divorced woman. But I think it took me so long because I told myself, I would be cautious with this next book.
I would write something short and simple and not draw the kinds of criticism that some people had for The Help. Yeah. And what I ended up with was a very vanilla, you know, banana-flavored book, version of this book that...

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:34)
Because you were trying to write not to offend anybody.

**Kathryn Stockett** (3:36)
That's right. Yeah. And I was trying to write something that had no heart in it.
And what I finally had to admit myself after many years of failure was that you cannot write about Mississippi and certainly not in the 1930s without talking about race, without talking about discrimination and the absurdities of some of the rules that were in existence, especially in a place like Mississippi.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:06)
Yes, where I was born.

**Kathryn Stockett** (4:08)
Yes.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:09)
Yes. And was very happy to get out of at the time that I did.

**Kathryn Stockett** (4:13)
I understand. Yes.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:14)
And you understand. Yes. I always say I was born at the right time. I was born in, I'm going to start talking like Mississippi now.
I was born 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education. And the luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that I left Mississippi before I ever spent a day in a segregated school. Because had I grown up in a segregated school with teachers who were teaching me that I was less than, I would not have had the confidence or the agency or authority that I managed to have as a young girl moving to Milwaukee and never having to endure any of that. I think truly that made all the difference for me. And so what did you learn from the criticism of The Help? And what did you understand as the crux of that criticism?