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Liberated through Reading

By: Alexis Santana

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates once stated, showing he understood the importance of examining what we believe (or what we are told) to be absolute truths. In order to obtain, or come close, to real wisdom, Socrates continuously examined himself, as well as others. For his philosophical view, Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth and sentenced to death. It is ironic that in our western society that elevates Socrates as a tenant of our liberal education there exists attempts of challenging and banning unique book titles from public schools and libraries. As a society that has built its liberal education off of Socrates’ belief, we need to understand that reading is a liberatory act because it provides readers with cognitive development and a form of healthy escapism.

Many people assume it is necessary to censor harmful reading material from public schools and libraries in order to keep children and young adults safe from corruptible ideals and beliefs. News outlets such as the Harvard Gazette and CNN report that these potentially harmful reading materials are often in genres that represent LGBTQ+ and black indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities. Book ban data for 2023, compiled by the American Library Association (ALA), shows that texts related to “LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts.” Many parents are concerned that exposing young adults too early in their development to literature that questions sexuality and race can be harmful, if not traumatic. I agree with these parents; children should not be pressured into learning about the complexities of sexual orientation, race or critical race theory before they are even capable of understanding themselves or formulating their own opinions. Books should not be weaponized to prime children in what to think but rather to help nurture their cognitive development by guiding them in how to think, or, as Socrates advises, by aiding them in examining their lives.   

Cognitive development Strengthens Diversity 

  Although I concede that children should be protected from difficult, uncomfortable and challenging ideologies, I disagree with banning books, especially those representing diverse communities, as a viable solution. After all, isn’t coming of age difficult, uncomfortable and filled with challenging ideologies? Why not give access to young adults, especially those representing LGBTQ and BIPOC communities, books that mirror their unique living experiences?   

Banning books that represent often silenced and underrepresented communities only perpetuates oppression of these communities, further alienating them from themselves and the dominant culture: white America. It is no secret that America’s social construct is built around the white, able-bodied, high-income, educated, heterosexual male. Author and professor Krystal Keels elaborates on how “ideals of white supremacy and heteronormative values” are not the only building blocks of origin stories in the US in her article “Resisting Dominant Narratives.” Maintaining a narrow frame of reference by restricting other voices from contributing encourages, uplifts, and rewards those who embody such characteristics that align with the dominant narrative, but not everyone in America fits into this cookie-cutter design.   

The reality about America is documented best in the ALA’s reporting on its website of a record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023. Emily Drabinski, president of the ALA, had this to say about our unique country: “Our communities and our country are stronger because of diversity. Libraries that reflect their communities’ diversity promote learning and empathy that some people want to or eliminate” (American Library Association). Facilitating access to diverse literary works not only helps diverse communities voice their unique lived experience, is culturally relevant, and promotes self-worth for their minority readers, but it also reflects our country as a whole and strengthens our bonds with our culture by providing readers with minorities’ perspectives of American life.   

Wider Perspective: Examining Life 

In order to illustrate the support literacy has in assisting young adults’ understanding of how identities are shaped, Phillip Wilders, author of the article, “Conversations with Myself,” selected a BIPOC literary work to help him facilitate a high school class assignment. The BIPOC book selected was Parrot in the Oven by Victor Martinez. Parrot in the Oven is a novel about a young Mexican-American named Manny, coming of age in the United States amidst racism, domestic abuse, poverty and other common adolescent hardships. Wilder’s reason for selecting this BIPOC book was, as he states, “because it provided a rich basis for students to interrogate social messages about self-worth” (61). 

During the classroom assignment, Wilder instructed his students to read selected passages from Parrot in the Oven and had his students, in groups, deconstruct the selected passages. During one of these assignments, Wilder intentionally selected a passage where Manny (the main character) struggles to identify his value as a person by reflecting and examining if its his ethnicity, his financial need, his desire, or something else that has influenced the adolescent Manny to work with migrants, picking peppers. Wilder did this, as he states, “to help students understand how outside messages can shape our identities” (62). Wilder’s selected passage, in the voice of Manny from the novel, reads:   

I wasn’t like Nardo. I suppose years of not knowing what, besides work, was expected from a Mexican convinced me that I wouldn’t pass from this earth without putting in a lot of days. I suppose Nardo figured the same and wasn’t about to waste his time. But I was of my grandpa Ignacio’s line of useful blood. All his life, no matter what the job, my grandpa worked like a man trying to fill all his tomorrows with one solid day’s work…without work, I was empty as a coke bottle (Martinez 6-7; Wilder 62). 

The following is Wilder’s recorded transcripts of his students’ deconstruction of the precious text:  

The students’ conversation over the BIPOC novel demonstrates the benefits of having young adults read these types of materials. The students weren’t only examining the life of a young Mexican American but also were living and learning vicariously through Manny’s self-reflections. Unannounced to these students, they were practicing Socrates’ philosophy of examining life and benefiting from it by widening their perspectives on the meaning of identity. Kyle demonstrates this by echoing the biased stigma circulating the United States that “Mexicans supposed to be hard workers” ( Wilder 63). 

As a first generation Mexican American, I can testify that the hard-working-blue-collar-Mexican narrative is so commonly reinforced by family members of biased outlets. Growing up, I never pictured my life past a warehouse worker, not for the lack of dreaming but for my disbelief that anyone who looked like me was capable of achieving more. None of my family members had graduated from high school or had been more than farmers or blue-collar workers. My identity was shaped by my mother’s hardworking ethics. My mother to this day is similar, if not identical, to Manny’s description of his grandfather: “my grandpa worked like a man trying to fill all his tomorrows with one solid day’s work” (Martinez 62). Today I am 28 years old and in prison. During my high school years, BIPOC readings were not class assignments. If they had been, I could have come to the realization that Kyle points out about Manny’s older brother, that “Mexicans are supposed to be hard workers. Nardo just refuses to be who they said he should be” (Martinez 63). This realization could have guided me to quit work and focus energy on my studies which, in turn, may have developed into a self-fulfilling prophecy because my studying would have led me to gaining confidence in my cognitive abilities. I’m not saying BIPOC literary works hold all the answers, but they can help develop our ability to solve identity problems by examining our lives in a wider context, liberating us of potentially debilitating assumptions.

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Being that I am currently going on my sixth year of incarceration, I know well enough the yearning to escape from the mind-numbing, mental torture of confinement. Reading has become a liberating act during my confinement; it momentarily transports me mentally into fictitious worlds where I venture through fields of old, through science fiction worlds, where I command magic or possess superpowers.  I’m not the only prisoner (person) that feels this way about reading. For example, in Jane Garner’s article “Almost like Freedom: Prison Libraries and Reading as Facilitators of Escape,” Garner interviews several prisoners, inquiring from each of them how reading has helped them mentally escape from prison. One interviewee named Mitchell had this to say about his experience: “You shut down. If you’ve had enough of every idiot around here. With everyone enclosed in a little can. It gets a bit hectic at times. Pick up a book, and you’re a mile away [sic]” (Garner 15). I can relate to Mitchell’s experience of escaping prison through reading. From my personal experience there is nothing more torturing than sitting in a cell feeling the whole weight of a single moment idly leaning on your shoulders, then realizing that that single minute is just a fragment of the years you yet have to serve.

Through reading, though, I have been able to withstand the gravity of my imprisonment and live vicariously through other worlds. One of the many books that has brought me a sense of freedom and has motivated me to continue striving against all forms of adversity is Red Rising by Pierce Brown. Red Rising is the first book in the series, written by Brown. I found myself unable to peel away from the science fiction dystopian future Brown crafted. Between the covers of this book exists a world where humanity has evolved into giants with incredible strength and intellect. The human race billions of years into the future has terraformed other planets in our solar system, but no matter how advanced society became, a hierarchy in the form of a color-coded caste system still existed. 

I followed Dorrow (the main character) as he climbed the ranks of society on a mission to liberate his people from the shackles that enslaved them. Dorrow was born a red (the lowest of society) and went through intense genetic reengineering in order to have the body and mind of a Gold (the rulers of society). Here is a snippet of Red Rising that I found inspirational: “We want you to show us your brilliance, like Alexander. Like Caesar, Napoleon, and Marrywater…The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the killers of men” (Brown 161). This quote inspired me to study historical figures and events. I figured if I wanted to liberate myself from bondage like Dorrow, I had to have a deep understanding of human history; I figured that I could not go through the painful procedure of genetic re-engineering, but I could withstand the growing pains of learning, failing and learning again.   

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Reading fictional books not only helps prisoners escape their current circumstance, but it can free non-incarcerated people as well. Cammie J. Lawton and Leia K. Cain share their personal stories and findings on how reading has affected their lives in their article titled “Fictional Escapism and Identity Formation: A Duo-ethnographic Exploration of Stories and Adolescent Development.” When Lawton’s life took a turn and she discovered that her mother was diagnosed with a chronic illness, she turned to books as she states, “to distract myself from the uncertainty of my home life shifting” (Lawton and Cain 2943). Fictional books allowed Lawton to escape into a world where illness could be cured and provided her with hope that everything in her life would be all right.

Reading fiction helps us discover our identity and feel confident in ourselves. This is what happened to the other author of this article, Leia Cain. Cain discovered language she could apply to her sexual identity through reading Divergent, a science fiction book where a caste system exists in which characters can hold one label, one caste; to be able to hold multiple labels and caste meant the character was divergent and killed off. Cain describes her reflection in Divergent by saying, “this being divergent, and representing multiple factions, made me start to gravitate toward the label of bisexual-something that, to me, felt divergent, bisexuality was divergent. My sexuality was divergent” (Lawton and Cain 2950). 

Lawton and Cain both benefited from reading as a form of escaping their current reality or discovered a new way to identify themselves through reading, which some claim to be liberating results of reading. Others would argue that reading can be an isolating action, like video games, binge watching TV, or simply scrolling through social media newsfeed. Reading can become addictive and, at its worst, reading as a form of escapism, can build habits in people, where instead of dealing with reality they could rather escape into a fictional one. I agree that reading can turn into an addictive action and can be concerning when people predominately prefer the company of a book over other people. Yet reading is not as destructive as other forms of entertainment. Through reading we grow as individuals and better connect with others. After all, some of the greatest movies and TV shows were based off of novels, and how often do we not bond over quoting our favorite scenes?  

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People have different opinions on how reading shapes our society. Some want to ban books that voice diverse communities’ lived experiences; other want to make these books accessible to everyone. Yet, as a society that has built its liberal education off of Socrates’ belief that a life well-lived is one well-examined, we need to understand that reading is a liberatory act because it provides readers with cognitive development in the form of healthy escapism. I’m not saying we indoctrinate small children into a certain way of thinking, but that as a society we come together and make diverse readings available to people at an appropriate age (typically during coming of age). Moreover, as parents we have a responsibility over our own children to nurture their development of identity, self-discovery, and examination of their lives and their selves. 

Works Cited

“American Library Association Reports Record Number of Unique Book Titles Challenged in 2023.” American Library Association. ala.org/ 

Brown, Pierce. Red Rising. Del Rey Trade, 2014. 

Chavez, Nicole. “Books About LBGTQ and Black People Among the Most Challenged in 2021.” CNN. 4 April 2022 most- challenged-books/index.html/ÌýÌý

Garner, Jane. “Almost Like Freedom: Prison Libraries and Reading as Facilitators of Escape.” Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, Vol. 90, No. 1, 2020, pp.5-19.ÌýÌý

Keels, Crystal L. “Resisting Dominant Narratives.” Learning for Justice.19 Sept 2022 learningforjustice.org/magazine/resisting-dominant-narratives/.ÌýÌý

Lawton, Cammie J. and Leia K. Cain. “Fictional Escapism and Identity Formation: A Duo- ethnographic Exploration of Stories and Adolescent Development.” The Qualitative Report, Vol. 27, No. 12, 2022, pp. 2022-2938. 

Perfas, Samantha. “Who’s Getting Most Hurt by Soaring LBGTQ Book Bans? Librarians Say Kids.” Harvard Gazette. 8 June 2023 news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/06/lgbtq- book-challenges-are-on-the-rise-heres-why/ÌýÌý

Wilder, Phillip. “Conversations with Myself. The English Journal, Vol. 108, No. 3, 2019, pp. 60- 66. 

Weingus, L. (2020, June 4). 10 of Madonna’s Most Controversial Moments. Biography. ÌýÌý