Left Unread Books | The Secret Power of Literature... a...

The Secret Power of Literature... and spoiler alert, it's not escapism.

Escapism is lovely, but that is not what reading does for me. So I thought I would share a little bit about one of the biggest things I get out of reading.

Reading is not an escape for me. At least, not in the way that BookTok keeps telling me that it should be. For me, reading is an opportunity for me to reexamine myself. It is a tool that helps me to widen my lens as I look at the world. It helps me to contextualize my experience and to more honestly assess the part I play in society.

As a kid, I thought that when I grew up, the powerlessness would end and the sky would be the limit. I thought that, if I worked hard, I would be able to give myself all of the things that I had spent my childhood being denied. But--surprise surprise--that did not turn out to be the case. Life is just as hard on this side of the great circle. In fact, it seems to get harder and harder the more of it I live. So I am completely on board with anything that gives people an opportunity to set all of that aside and just find joy for a moment or two. But, for me, that is not what literature offers. For me, when I dive into a book, I go in ready to have a conversation about who I am, what the world actually looks like, and what choices I have for reexamining both.

Before we go any further, I want to be clear. This essay is not going to be a condemnation of those who choose to--or are even able to--escape in a book. In fact, if reading does that for you, I love that for you. Genuinely. But I want to share one of the things that reading can do for you that I really don’t see a lot of people talking about. Because I think it might be an asset to you.

For me, one of the most powerful things that reading does is help me grieve.

Let me explain.

Last year, I picked up a book called Kindred for the first time. Yeah, that Kindred. Unsurprisingly, it was phenomenal. As all of Octavia Butler’s work is. And like the rest of her work, Kindred forced me to ask questions and to feel things that I never would have expected. Which was shocking to me because…well…I thought I had thoroughly considered my feelings around this subject.

To provide you a bit of context, Kindred follows a Black woman in the 70s who is supernaturally transported back to the antebellum south, where she is forced to live alongside her ancestors—one of whom is a slave, and the other, a slave owner.

Yeah… this is a heavy book. Not only is Dana—the main character—having to wrestle through that unbelievably traumatic loss, but she is also forced to live alongside the ancestor who suffered the most for her to be here. Sometimes even having to choose between sparing her that suffering, or protecting her own future.

As I read that book, I found myself obviously wrestling through all of the feelings you’d expect. I thought about the horror of slavery, and what my ancestors must have went through, especially the Black women who suffered through those generations. I thought about the freedoms I now have and how little actually stands between us and a much darker future. I thought about all of the work that is being done every day to unravel Black liberty in America. But the thing that really moved me in this story was the grief…. the grief that there is an entire history of people who fought and bled in order for me to be here; who lived horrible lives and suffered…and were then reduced to a checkmark on a page. The names I should know, that I’ll never get to. The stories I should have been told at my grandmother’s knee that she never even heard herself.

I grieved over those lost histories and the legacy Black people have been denied, all for a greed so deep that it allowed people to feel justified erasing the humanity of an entire race of people.

Kindred forced me to wrestle with so many incredibly interesting thoughts. It kept me critically engaged from the very first sentence to the very last. But the one thing that stayed constant as I read was the grief.

And for many, that probably sounds like a nightmare. But it wasn’t. To me, it was a gift. Because when I was done with that book, I had wrestled so thoroughly with this piece of my own history that I was, and will forever be, changed. It altered my brain chemistry, as they like to say on the TikTok.

Octavia Butler took a story that some would label trauma porn, and she helped me to actually sit with a grief that I had spent my entire life trying desperately not to sit with. And, while it hurt in the moment to wrestle with those feelings, the end result was a lot of healing.

And for me…. that is one of the unspoken powers of literature. Even when those stories don’t directly speak to a trauma you have experienced, they have the power to help you wrestle with trauma that you have.

Here are some other books that really helped me to sit with grief:

And the list goes on and on and on.

Literature has helped me to not only wrestle with my responsibilities, but with my grief. And personally, I think that has made my life infinitely better. So my gentle encouragement to you is to make space for grief as you read. Don't just ask yourself what the stories you are throwing yourself into say about the future. Also ask them what space they are trying to hold for you. Because I assure you, literature is trying to hold space for you.