Back to School

The kids in my local school district went back to school today. And while I am content to be out of the classroom for a little while, I can't help but be excited for them. Especially since I caught up with one of their English teachers at the library recently and had a great conversation about reading.

Have you ever thought about how much you actually read in a day? Signs, news, social media? We actually read an incredible amount every day. We just don't always realize it. Or, we don't really count it as reading.

When I was teaching, I always had kids tell me they hated reading. But that wasn't true. They just hadn't found what they enjoyed reading yet. Novels aren't for everyone. Sadly, over the years reading in school has become very limited. English class will expose you to fiction (short and long), poetry, and some drama. You might read some non-fiction in other classes, but text books weren't written with reading enjoyment in mind. Electives might give a few more reading options, especially if you study something journalism related. But for the most part, reading in school offers kids a very narrow selection of all the wonderful types of writing out there.

So when kids told me they hated reading, I knew that wasn't the whole truth. They just hadn't found the things they liked to read.

When I talked to the local English teacher, she had come to the same conclusion. And I think it is a conclusion that a lot of teachers are making. Reading isn't just novels. It isn't just textbooks. Reading can be blogs, magazines, instructional manuals. It can be pretty much anything really. It might take a little creativity on the teacher's part, but every child can become a reader. We just have to help them find what it is they like to read and then let at it.

To all the students starting school today, I hope this year you find what you like to read. To all the teachers, I hope you can find a way to support every students' reading choices. It might take some flexibility, but it will be worth it in the end. Reading opens up doors to education, employment, and a better life. It doesn't matter if it is Moby Dick or Popular Mechanics.

Literary Diversity

I have always been a voracious reader. However, I only recently realized I was not a very diverse reader.

Growing up, my mom was an avid reader. She would take my sister and me to the library almost as much as she went herself. We would go home with our canvas bags full of as many books as they would let us check out at one time (on all three of our accounts). It was a lot of books.

As we got older and graduated to chapter books, the sacks got slightly lighter.

My sister decided reading wasn’t really for her. She wouldn’t rediscover her passion for it until she was swept up in the Harry Potter series in high school.

I continued to read but found myself in kind of a literary gray area. The books for my age group were too easy. I have several librarian friends now, but as a kid, I was on my own to figure out what I like to read. I wasn’t very successful. Instead, when I wasn’t reading for school, I turned to the books my mom was reading.

She liked murder mysteries. Now, I am not hating on genre fiction. I enjoyed her books.  But the thing with genre fiction is it isn’t very diverse. Scan the shelves of any genre fiction section, and you will notice that most of the authors are pretty similar.

And what I was getting from school wasn’t much better. We read a lot of what would be considered classics, but even the contemporary stuff was pretty White European. Sure, senior year there was a splash of Russian and African literature, but for the most part, the books I read growing up were white, white, white.

I specifically remember disliking Crime and Punishment. Something about it was off. Also, I couldn’t pronounce all the names, and I got a lot of the characters confused. It would be several more years before I could really understand why, though.

College wasn’t much better. Despite being a lit major, assigned reading was still almost entirely written by white European authors. I did sign up for a Native American Lit class, but it was canceled before semester started and I ended up in Contemporary Irish Lit instead. I graduated with  B.A. in English and Creative Writing, but still no reading diversity.

In the end, it took moving half way across the world to open up my reading horizons. When I moved to Japan, one of the first things I did was start reading their literature. I read classics like The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book. I also fell in love with some of their contemporary writers. Kafka on the Shore has become one of my all-time favorite books, though I can’t say I love all of Murakami’s works. But it wasn’t just Japanese Literature. I would haunt the foreign language section of my local used book store grabbing any title that piqued my interest. I read a surprising amount of Spanish Literature while I was in Japan. Apparently, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is quite popular in the Land of the Rising Sun.

The more I read from other cultures, the more I realized how much our writing style and preference is based on culture. At first, the Spanish and Japanese books frustrated me. Their stories didn’t follow the rules I was used to – the rules I had been taught, the rules I tried to apply to my own writing. Their stories meandered, fell off, picked back up, and sometimes just ended. I still get angry when I think of the ending of Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart.

But over time, I came to appreciate the differences. I came to realize that, depending on the values and history of your culture, there can be many ways to tell the same story. The goal of every author is the same, but how they get there is shaped by the writing styles of their culture.

Sadly, now that I am back in the U.S. my reading diversity has shrunk slightly. My job writing English lessons online has cluttered my desk with more White European classics than I had on my bookshelf in Japan. However, I am still trying to make time to read things from other cultures. Crime and Punishment has moved from a dusty bookshelf to the bottom of my to read pile, just under my new translation of The Tale of Genji.

Reading is important, but diverse reading might be even more so. For me, foreign literature gave me a way to understand the nuances of a culture that wasn’t my own. It also caused me to examine what the stories I grew up reading said about the values of my White European culture. As a writer, it has opened my eyes to a whole new world of literary elements and styles. Stories don’t have to follow the rules I spent most of my life learning. Personally, I like it better if they do, but not every story has to be told the same way. A frightening and thrilling idea for any writer. Or reader.

Re-reading

I used to believe in only reading a book once. Not because it wasn't good and I didn't enjoy it, but because there was just so much to read, I didn't have time to read the same things over again. Turns out I was wrong.

I just finished re-reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for my literary lesson job. The first time I read it was about a year ago in Japan (beggars can't be choosers when you are dependant on the foreign language section of your local second-hand shop). I didn't love it then. I still don't love it now. But rereading it, exposed a depth and nuance I missed the first go round.

I had the same experience re-reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood. The story still pissed me off a great deal. It rekindled my anger at the Japanese mental health system. But the second time through also gave me deeper insight into the characters and the real heart of the story.

Interesting. As I have re-read book after book, I have realized my fondness for the material doesn't always change (in some cases it even gets worse), but my appreciation and understanding of the artistry increases. The first time through, it is all about the surface story. The second time, I am able to dive in and find the deeper truth.

I have started re-reading books that aren't part of my job. Books that I read just for me.  Books I enjoyed. Stories I cherished. I wonder if I will find the same undercurrent waiting for me? I hope so.

Classics

Recently, I took a job writing English Lit lessons for an online company. Kind of like Cliff’s Notes, but online.

For the most part, it has been an enjoyable experience. It has given me an excuse to revisit some of my favorite authors and titles, exploring them with new eyes and insight. It has pushed me to read books I always meant to read and never got around to like Life of Pi. It has convinced me that maybe I was a little too quick to dismiss authors like Hemingway and Dostoyevsky back in high school. Thinking critically and exploring Shakespeare has led to a deeper appreciation of his works than I ever got in my Shakespeare classes in college. A lot of it probably has to do with my growth as a reader, thinker, and educator, but I’m having fun looking at these texts in a more serious light.

However, not every text I have worked on has been enjoyable. Slogging through Moby Dick was the closest thing to torture I have ever experienced. I hated that book. And guess what, I wasn’t the only one. When it was published, everyone hated it too!

And this is my issue with classics.

There are many classics out there that deserve that title. I am thoroughly convinced Shakespeare was a genius. His works are like beautiful onions. Once you get past the language barrier, you are rewarded with layer upon layer of intricate meaning. They are timeless and universal stories of the human condition.

Melville also smashed tons of literary elements into his epic. More than plot or character development, in my opinion. I struggled to find the story for the forest of allusions, information dumps, and foreshadowing.

I also felt the subject hadn’t aged well. Something common in “classics.” I struggled with nautical terms, understanding the world of the story, and why I was wasting my time trying to summarize and analyze an industry and a world that would make no sense to a Millennial anyway. Or whatever generation we are in now. The truth is, there are plenty of other, more approachable, books that explore the same themes. Why make it harder on students? Or on myself?

I feel books like Moby Dick have become more of a status symbol than anything else. People who have read them are literary snobs or English professors. It’s like the top notch cosplayers or the comic book nerds who look down on newbies at conventions.

Just because a book is old does not mean it is good. A lot of “classics” seem to be hanging on just because the generation before and the generation before decided they were worth keeping around. Maybe they spoke to those generations, but that doesn’t mean they can speak to this one.

Literature can be a really stuffy place!