Reading Outside of Myself
On books that shake us to the core, bringing children into the world to suffer, and the shared human nature that reads and writes
Note, I discuss issues related to race and racism in this post. I know such topics can raise up a lot of emotions, and I know that I am writing about this topic from the “outside.” So please, assume the best of me and your fellow readers and respond in charity.
One of the brightest spots in this past year was the short, and very sweet, reunion of our college friend group. Between little ones, travel costs, and a variety of job schedules, it’s a minor miracle most of us were able to meet up in Michigan. During our time together, God showered us with an abundance of joy, an abundance of laughter, and an abundance of good conversation.
One of my favorite conversations occurred in the wake of a paddle boarding expedition with a couple of my girlfriends. Much to everyone’s surprise, especially my own, I did not, in fact, fall off of my board. After paddling around for a bit, we lounged on a nearby dock and, as we used to do in the hallways of our dorm, enjoyed some “deep talk.” One of my friends, who has suffered from inherited chronic health issues, brought up a question for those of us who were already parents: how do you bring kids into the world knowing that they are going to suffer, and knowing that they are going to suffer specifically because of the things you pass on to them.
Reflecting on the question, I was reminded of a beautiful, emotionally exhausting, and tragic work of fiction: Quicksand by Nella Larsen. Larsen (1891-1964) was an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, born to a West Indian father, who soon disappeared from her life, and a Danish immigrant mother. Her mother remarried another Danish immigrant, and from that point forward, Larsen struggled with her identity. As Darryl Pinckney, an American author wrote: “If [Larsen] could never be white like her mother and sister, neither could she ever be black in quite the same way that Langston Hughes and his characters were black. Hers was a netherworld, unrecognizable historically and too painful to dredge up.”1
Larsen’s struggle with concepts of racial identity, and racism itself, are reflected in Quicksand. Like Larsen, Quicksand’s main character, Helga Crane, is the daughter of a black father and a Danish mother. Helga travels across both the United States and the Atlantic Ocean, in search of love, belonging, and happiness. She doesn’t find it. One of the more harrowing passages comes from Helga reflecting on the prospect of marriage and children. For Helga is terrified at the thought of bringing children into the world who are destined to suffer for that which they cannot control; the color of their skin:
“How stupid she had been ever to have thought that she could marry and perhaps have children in a land where every dark child was handicapped at the start by the shroud of color! She saw, suddenly, the giving birth to little, helpless, unprotesting Negro children as a sin, an unforgivable outrage. More black folks to suffer indignities. More dark bodies for mobs to lynch.”
There are few things I’ve read, or seen, that have provided a more powerful glimpse of the ways in which racism wounds its victims. I grew up in extraordinarily privileged circumstances and continue to live an extraordinarily privileged life. I do not know what it is to live in a society where I am, “handicapped at the start by the shroud of color.” I do not know what it is to raise children who might very well become “more bodies for mobs to lynch.” I do not know what it is to feel so hopeless in the face of seemingly insurmountable, and systemic, racial discrimination, that “giving birth to little, helpless, unprotesting” children seems like “a sin.”
And it is because I cannot know these things for myself that I read fiction, particularly literary fiction. More so than nonfiction, or even popular genre fiction, literary fiction has been shown to improve our empathy. As the great literary critic, Harold Bloom wrote, we read because “we cannot know enough people profoundly enough” and “we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.”2 In the character of Helga Crane, I can see, feel, and think with the eyes, heart, and mind of a new person. And by knowing Helga Crane in such an intimate and profound manner, I learn about “the way things are” for a person who has suffered under the cross of racism in a way I never have.
Furthermore, as I “take on” the heart and mind of a character whose life is unlike my own, I am drawn into contemplating what binds us together in our common humanity. For when we “read deeply,” we can “learn to share in the one nature that writes and reads.”3 In great literature, our experience of the particular allows us to approach the universal, the human nature that we all share. God be praised, I have not known the particular experience of seeing child-bearing as “an unforgivable outrage.” But in the human nature I share with Nella Larsen, I have known the universal pain of adulthood, whether that adulthood includes biological parenthood or not: children are born into this world who will inevitably suffer as a result of circumstances outside of our, or their, control. I have not known the particular experience of racial discrimination as experienced by women of color like Nella Larsen, but in our shared humanity, I have known the universal experience of suffering. And in coming to know, through the act of reading, a particular version of humanity’s shared suffering, I can expand my capacity for empathy, compassion, and charity towards those who suffer likewise in the real world.
What are the books you have read that have expanded your horizons, or allowed you to experience particular lives unlike your own? What are the books that best speak to the universal experiences of humanity through particular circumstances?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nella_Larsen
How to Read and Why
Ibid
I’ve heard of that before but have never read it. I’ll have to add that to my list as well!
A few months ago, in the hustle to choose a library book while also wrangling my children, I grabbed a random book off the shelf, and I’m so glad I did. It was The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali. It’s a beautiful story about a young woman living through the political and cultural turmoil of 1953 Tehran, which I knew little about before picking up the novel. I’ve been thinking about its characters ever since, particularly in the main character’s perspective on America as an outsider, something I will never experience.