What fiction can teach us if only we’d give it a chance
A guest essay on why stories are more than ‘just entertainment’ and how fiction helps us build empathy and understand ourselves better
Hello, book friends! Today, brittany lea joins us to write about why reading fiction can be one of the best ways to learn about ourselves and other people. Her piece particularly resonates with me—on Reads With Alicia, as in real life, I often say that I don’t read based on genres so much as I’m drawn to books that teach me something about the world and the people that inhabit it.
Fiction is sometimes criticised as being ‘not real’ or ‘just entertainment’, but in Brittany’s essay, she shows how stories can bring to life experiences and identities we might never encounter otherwise, and how that can change how we move through real life. I’m so glad to be sharing her words with you today.
brittany lea writes at her own Substack, you had me at ‘book club’, where she shares personal essays about life, love, friendship, and trying to figure it all out. She’s especially interested in the personal lessons we learn when we pay close attention to the stories we read and the emotions they stir up in us.
About three months ago, a coworker of mine mentioned that she doesn’t like to read fiction because it’s just “entertainment,” and if she’s going to read, she’d rather read something educational.
At the time, I reacted politely, simply saying, “I understand.”
But inside, I felt frustrated. I’ve heard this before from countless people. Why would I read a book when I can just watch a movie? Reading seems like a waste of time. If I’m going to read, I want it to teach me something.
The truth is, there’s merit to those lines of thinking. Yes, movies and TV are easier-to-digest forms of entertainment. Yes, reading a book can take time, and if you don’t have a lot of it to spare, it can feel like a waste if you’re not enjoying the book. Yes, learning about something specific while reading is great and valuable.
On the other hand, it feels as though there’s a key piece missing.
Reading fiction isn’t only entertainment. I’d argue that reading fiction is actually crucial to developing the ability to understand each other and the world around us. It’s the ideal breeding ground for empathy. And if the world needs more of anything these days, it’s empathy.
As children, our parents and teachers read us stories to teach us about school, our bodies, our emotions, animals, family, friends, the world, and other things we may come in contact with one day, as a way to expose us to new ideas and concepts we haven’t yet experienced in real life. Reading introduces us to new thoughts in a safe way, allowing us to process them and prepare ourselves for what we might face in the future.
It reminds me of an argument that claims people love scary movies so much because they soothe anxiety around the unknown. “The paradox of horror” explores how human beings are instinctively wired to avoid harmful situations, yet we often can’t look away when awful things happen—a car wreck on the side of a highway, or a natural disaster on the news.
Our morbid curiosity steers us towards these terrible things, sometimes in the form of haunted houses, or most often, scary movies, because it satisfies our innate need to avoid danger. How does walking towards danger help us to avoid it? Well, the idea is that by experiencing danger in safe settings, we convince ourselves we’re learning how to avoid it in real life. Whether or not we’ll be able to put into practice what we learn if we’re ever in those situations is another argument altogether.
Reading is similar. When we read about various topics, we get to experience them in safe settings and explore in our minds and bodies how it might feel to live through different scenarios. What started out as an exercise in teaching children how to learn the basics of interacting with the world develops into a deeper practice in empathy and social studies.
As we get older, our school curriculum requires us to read more complex fiction. We come across novels like To Kill a Mockingbird, in which a young protagonist’s view of her world is shaken as she learns about racism through her limited interactions and understanding of her father’s work. Or Lord of the Flies, where a group of young boys are stranded and try to establish a new civilized society amongst themselves, but come to find how conflicting interests and opinions can be devastatingly tumultuous, and “order” is often a fragile concept. Or The Outsiders, a story of young “greasers” and “socs” fighting simply because they come from vastly different socio-economic circumstances.
These stories expose us to new worlds and concepts we may not have experienced yet, or may not have ever faced if not for reading about them. We learn about racism and the harms it causes, without having to see it inflicted on ourselves, our friends or neighbours. We get to explore the dangers of an uncivilized society and see how quickly order turns into chaos. We see that financial status doesn’t make anybody more or less human at heart. These lessons don’t protect us from experiencing harm in real life, but they allow us to dip our toes into the shallow end of an unsafe world, so we can learn how to swim before being thrown into the deep end.
Reading also teaches us what the world is like for people who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, or who don’t believe the same things we believe, and this is crucial.
It’s the most effective way of truly walking in someone else’s shoes.
In my experience, reading fiction is also one of the best and most accessible ways of learning more about yourself. It’s like free therapy.
There have been countless occasions when I’ve been reading a book and caught myself crying so intensely my tears blurred the page, laughing out loud, or being angry on behalf of the characters so much so that I had to set the book aside to calm down. These feelings–as any self-identified reader can tell you—are powerful, and so real.
In January of this year, I started a project with the exact goal of getting to know myself on a deeper level. I wanted to read every book I already own, especially those I’ve already read. I started with The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. The first time I read this novel was nearly ten years ago in university. At the time, I hated it. Picking it up again at this point in my life, I understood it with a newfound perspective. I wrote about this experience and all I learned about myself while doing so. In short, I reflected on all the times in my life when I felt the same feelings the main character felt. By reading the book a second time, I also gained perspective into why it bothered me so much the first time.
This discovery was only possible because I sat with my feelings as I read—I did so by keeping a journal. I wrote about my impressions of the book, noted memories and feelings that kept emerging as I read, and dove deeper into them. I’d encourage anyone reading this to try this exercise the next time you read a work of fiction. You might be surprised by what comes up.
I’m not sure if it’s from a lifelong love of reading, or from studying literature at university, but I’ve trained my brain to examine story in an effort to find meaning. Story can be anything—the news, books, movies, music, themes or patterns in your relationships—that you notice and that cause you to pause. This inclination to find meaning is a practice in understanding the world around me. I’m not claiming to have perfected this, but I’ve surely created a habit out of it, and I can tell you, more often than not, it helps me find peace.
Instead of getting irritated at a neighbor that plays their music too loud, or a driver who double parked their car, or a grocery store employee with a sour mood, I try to imagine their story. You never know what someone else is going through, but we all have stories to tell. The more you read, the more this becomes an indisputable truth in your life.
If brittany lea’s post also resonated with you, we’d love to know the books that helped you see yourself or the world a bit differently. And do you think of fiction as entertainment, education, or something else altogether?
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Many things let check it out here!!
Love this. Fiction expands our worldview and takes us places we could never see for ourselves.