Can Literature Make Our Nation Less Insular?

“I believe the appeal and engagement with these texts was not my instruction. Instead, it was the content, or more importantly, the humanity in these texts. Beyond our differences, we all desire family and community, we all seek love and acceptance, we all make mistakes because of our flaws, and we all struggle with decisions. In these universal truths, shared in text, my students simply saw human beings, and they related to them. That connection is powerful. My students came away with a consciousness about “others” without even leaving their neighborhoods. Through reading, discussing, and writing, students engaged with text that forced them to walk in the shoes of people they had never before come into contact with.”