Books Are Ammo for Your Brain

Humans invented storytelling to explain things to others that they hadn’t experienced themselves. It’s a way of passing on information, but also inspiration and empathy. Eventually oral tradition evolved to writing. Which means, since the invention of writing, we read to understand what is different from our own experience. Reading has the power to make us feel and understand people who are radically different than we are–to encounter their stories as practically our own. When this happens, I believe it’s much, much harder to see these folks as very different from ourselves. Which makes it a lot harder to judge, or hate, or commit violence against them.

Reading can be an excellent escape into blissful ignorance (and sometimes that is necessary), but it is, at its best, an extremely powerful weapons against ignorance.

Here are a few books that have helped me understand and empathize with folks walking a very different path from mine. I’d love to hear yours.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers,  Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff, Born Confused by Tajuna Desai Hidier, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini, The Color Purple Alice Walker