Mama: More Than Just 'The Help'

At 30,000 words, Mama is a heartwarming and poignant novella. My mama cleaned the houses, raised the kids, and counseled the families of the white folks she worked for, but she was much more than ‘The Help.’ She was a wife, mother, gardener, spiritual adviser, and teacher who had more formal education than many of the women whose homes she cleaned. She taught me more than could be found in any book – the importance of faith in a loving God, the priceless value of family, honesty, loyalty, hard work and education, and the unquenchable strength of hope - and raised a family of five children by squeezing a dollar to the last penny, recycling and reusing everything from paper to plastic. Mama lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, segregation in the deep South, and the Civil Rights Movement. Then she learned to use the internet. Georgella Prather lived to be eighty-five years old, and she was many things to many people. But first and foremost, she was my Mama.