Traveling Through Humanity

“The 100 Dresses” was the first book that changed me. It was about an impoverished little girl who is teased by her classmates for wearing the same dress every day, and who defends herself by saying, ”I have one hundred dresses lined up in my closet!” When she is forced to move, again, out of poverty, they find one hundred beautiful drawings of dresses lined up in her closet. I cried myself to sleep worrying about poor people and brave little girls, wondering if my imagination might help save me, too.

Discovering my neighbors had the complete set of Nancy Drew books, I was able to “check out” seven or eight books at a time, lasting only a day or two, if I played “horsey,” with their plastic-horse-obsessed daughters, who made me “neigh” and ride them all over their yard. I enjoyed a more sophisticated Barbie doll existence, with great conversation and outfit changes, so I really earned those books. When I stepped into the world of Nancy, George, Ned and even (now UN-PC) “pleasantly plump” Bess, I didn’t hear my parents fighting, and could at least change something somewhere.

When I ran out of Nancy Drew, I found another girl detective series at the grocery store. There weren’t many in the set, but Trixie Beldon was a normal girl who helped her family with their farm, not rich like Nancy with all the time in the world. I realized I was middle class, like Trixie, and that I could still right wrongs in my spare time. Her best friend, Honey, was rich but didn’t know much about real life, and Trixie helped her with that. It was okay that my home life was hard. It made me a better person.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me feminism through Arthurian legends, Elena Ferrante validated the intesity of my female relationships, Toni Morrison taught me about lifelong grief, Jeannette Walls and Curtis Sittenfeld mirrored my life, and Colson Whitehead almost convinced me there was a literal Underground Railroad. David Sedaris’ writing has helped me many times, especially when my first cat, Rodney, was dying and needed to be put down. I was laughing and crying as I made the most adult decision of my life.

I have suffered from debilitating depression for too great a portion of my life, and when I’ve most wanted to die, I’ve picked up a book about someone else’s life and been spirited out of my own. Understanding someone else as a way to free us from ourselves. Less escapism than necessity, reading has also freed me from the curiousities of my yet-to-be understood brain.

I have almost nightly stepped into the shoes of people all over the world, experiencing their hopes and hardships, candor and cruelty, hoping to further my understanding of humanity. I believe history classes would be more effective if told through personal stories instead of textbooks. I find it harder to forget suffering and injustice when I know someone through a book.