Kathryn Stockett

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, 'Look how far we've come,' because we hadn't come very far, to say the least. Although Jackson's population was half white and half black, I didn't have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

Well, Italy had been overrun by the War, there had practically been civil war, north and south of the Gothic Line, heavy bombing, the northern industrial cities had been bombed heavily and we had political disorder before 1948.

I'm one of those people who is colour blind to a certain degree. And that doesn't mean I'm not acutely aware of race in our country and abroad and in the world. I know what's going on, and I'm very aware of it.