Kathryn Stockett, the celebrated author of The Help, has finally released her long-awaited second novel, The Calamity Club, after a paralysing 17-year gap. In an exclusive interview with Dr. Aimee Walsh, the Mississippi-born writer revealed how a chilling real-world eugenics law inspired her dark, scandalous tale set in Depression-era Oxford, Mississippi.
The Paralysis of Success
The dreaded second novel stunts writers worldwide, even when their debut has been read by millions. Stockett's The Help shot to international success in 2009, appearing on bestseller lists, prize shortlists, and in supermarkets. It was everywhere. Then it was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, starring Octavia Butler, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Artists often bemoan the 'difficult second album' — and The Help is a tough act to follow.
Speaking with The Mirror's resident book critic, Stockett said returning to write after 17 years was “at times paralysing.” However, a moment of discovery about how women were treated in 1930s America captured her imagination and broke the block.
The Calamity Club: A Story of Survival
The Calamity Club tells the story of Meg Lefleur, an 11-year-old orphan who has survived heartbreaking abandonment by learning to depend only on herself. Living among the “unadoptable” older girls at a local orphanage after her mother vanished, Meg's guarded world begins to shift when she meets Birdie, a spirited newcomer determined to reconnect her privileged sister with the struggling relatives she left behind.
As Birdie uncovers long-buried secrets beneath Oxford's polished social circles, she and Meg become entwined with Charlie, a woman carrying the weight of profound loss. Together, the three find strength and solidarity among a scrappy group of women navigating poverty, prejudice, and the dangers of challenging a deeply divided Southern town.
The Chilling Law That Inspired It All
Like Stockett's The Help, this sophomore novel isn't afraid to tackle uncomfortable issues. Sex and women's bodies are central, specifically how they are policed by society's soft powers of shame right through to the strong arm of state-approved sterilisation. It was the discovery of the latter — the legislation that legalised sterilisation — that brought The Calamity Club to life.
In 1927, a landmark legal ruling saw The Eugenical Sterilization Act enacted against a woman deemed “unfit” for motherhood. The U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Buck v. Bell (1927) upheld the constitutionality of compulsory sterilisation for individuals deemed “unfit,” effectively legitimising eugenic sterilisation laws across the United States. The case centred on a young woman named Carrie Buck, who was institutionalised at the Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in Virginia. At age 17, Carrie was raped and became pregnant out of wedlock; as a result, she was deemed “feebleminded.” After the Supreme Court ruling, Carrie was sterilised on October 27, 1927.
Speaking with the Mirror about this law, Stockett said: “One day I stumbled upon a law that had been passed in Mississippi and it just chilled me. It essentially legalised the sterilisation of anyone with what they called in the law ‘idiocy’ or ‘feeble-mindedness’ or epilepsy. It also included what we now know today as autism. So anyone with a mental or physical disability qualified for sterilisation as a means to really cleanse society of these so-called ‘undesirables’. I couldn't believe it.”
“When I poked around more, I found out that Mississippi was actually way behind the times, that several dozen other states had already passed this law and the laws most often included women, preyed upon women, and what they called ‘the promiscuous woman’, which essentially was a poor, underclass woman who had very little and had children out of wedlock. They were deemed worthless.”
It was this reality for 1930s women that informed the backdrop to The Calamity Club. One character, Charlie, is sterilised under the order of an Oxford court. Worn down by hardship and with no other means of survival, the women band together to set up a brothel as a means of paying their way in a society that was not built for their success. Despite societal pressure from state and neighbours alike for women to be chaste, Stockett said that brothels “were everywhere” in Depression-era Mississippi.
A Feminist Motive?
Stockett added that choosing to set the novel in 1933 was “no accident.” The writer said it was important to set the story in “a time before penicillin was being widely used.” She explained: “I wanted these women to be facing real fears if they happened to pick up a disease on the job. If they picked up syphilis or gonorrhoea, there was a good likelihood that it would either kill them or it would ruin their lives.”
It struck me as a particularly feminist motive to write a book about the oppressive measures applied to women's bodies — especially the key role that the State of Mississippi had on overturning Roe v. Wade. But Stockett said that was not her intention, saying: “I'm not really a feminist only because I think I'm too lazy to be a feminist.”
Confronting Race
Beyond the gendered struggles in The Calamity Club, there is also an intersectional layer showing racial oppressions. In one instance, a slur is used to highlight this. It would be disingenuous not to address this in the interview with Stockett. I asked about the decision to include the n-word in a novel published today.
Stockett explained that she is “hyper-cognisant” of any use of the word, but that it is in there so as to “tell the truth” of Mississippi 1933. She added: “I want to honestly depict what it was like at a certain time and how a character would have spoken. So, I don't use it lightly whatsoever… Maybe it'll start a discussion about race. People are not discussing [race] enough now because everyone's so afraid of getting in trouble. People told me everywhere I went on The Help tour, there was always someone that pulled me aside and said, 'This book, maybe I didn't like all of it, but it certainly started conversations that otherwise would not have happened.'”
Art and literature exist to challenge mindsets. She said: “The purpose of art is in many cases to make us uncomfortable.”
The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett is out now. Love reading? Join Dr. Aimée Walsh and our community of fellow readers in the Mirror Book Club to dive deeper into the books everyone is talking about.
