Stockett said, “I was not prepared for a lot of those conversations, but I learned a new language.”
She went on, “In the beginning, I got defensive. But I learned to say, OK let’s talk about this. Why did it make you uncomfortable? What do you think would be a better option? If I didn’t write this book, would we be having this conversation?”
When she started writing “The Calamity Club” more than a decade ago, Stockett had no interest in sparking additional controversy. As a result, she said, early drafts were “bland, vanilla flavored,” lacking undertow or guts. She said, “It’s impossible to write about a place like Mississippi, especially in the 1930s, and not talk racism and sexism.”
In 2019, while chipping away at the book, Stockett moved to Bali with her daughter, now 22, and her then-partner, Wyatt Williams. The two met in 2011, a few weeks after Stockett’s divorce was finalized, when Williams profiled her for Creative Loafing magazine.
In his cover story, “Life in the Belle Jar,” Williams described Stockett’s “penetrating eyes” and “striking, fit body” and posed a question: “Can the best-selling, anxious, overrated, vulgar, talented, burned-out author help herself?”
Stockett said, “I really didn’t like what he published, or the picture, and I called him after it came out and said, ‘You need to come over and we need to talk about this.’ And then I just was smitten.”