Ablene Cooper, a 60-year-old woman who has long worked as a maid in Mississippi has filed a lawsuit against Kathryn Stockett, the author of the best-selling novel “The Help,” In the complaint, Ms. Cooper argues that one of the book’s principal characters Aibileen Clark, is an unpermitted appropriation of her name and image, which she finds emotionally distressing. It is more complicated than that. For the past dozen years, Ms. Cooper has worked for Ms. Stockett’s older brother and sister in law, and still does. She has also said that “The Help” was coolly received by some in her hometown. “Not everybody in Jackson, Mississippi is thrilled,” acknowledging that a few “close family members” were so unhappy that they were not talking to her. Ms. Cooper and her lawyers point out that the character Aibileen’s grown son died five months before her white employers’ first child was born, a sequence that closely mirrors the death of one of Ms. Cooper’s grown sons from cancer, several months before the birth of the Stocketts’ first child. Also, despite the spellings, the two names are pronounced similarly. However, Ms. Stockett is certain that she made up the characters on her own.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2011/02/help-author-kathryn-stockett-fights-lawsuit/1
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