Category Archives: Blog Post 1: Your English Story

English in the Age of Argument

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I think there are several reasons why someone becomes infatuated with literature enough to choose an English Major. Through my last four years at the college, I have met a plethora of people whose reasonings for the major differed. While I could claim I chose this major due to a great love for literature throughout my life, that would be a lie. I can name at most ten books I have ever truly enjoyed reading. I think it is important, however, to note that I do read it is just the ‘enjoying’ part that does not synchronize with my brain. I have always enjoyed music more as an art form. Many of my favorite memories from childhood are placed within the confines of my dad’s ‘music room’; which in reality was nothing more than a section in our basement between old collections of whatever lay in those unopened boxes. It was here that my dad kept his collections of CDs which reverberated against the concrete walls into a cacophony of echo and whatever album happened to be playing at the time. The sound quality and its blaring sound led my dad to have permanent tinnitus and me to have the hearing of a 35-year-old man at only 21, however, it was there in my basement where my ‘love’ for music grew.

Me enjoying a nice night out at the Charleston River Dogs game.

When coming to the College of Charleston, I originally planned on becoming a Communications Major. Due to the lack of a Journalism Major at the college, and my hopes to write about music, I thought communications best filled the void. It was after my first ‘public speaking’ class that I knew that path was not for me. During the summer of my freshman year, my mom and I discussed what major I should switch to and English was quickly understood to be my best route. I was mostly tentative about the English major as a focus as my fear of grammar and lack thereof in writing I felt would hinder my performance. It was not until my first few classes that I became genuinely interested in the way we would discuss and dissect various texts. 

I found Kathleen Ossip’s article, “Why All Poems Are Political” to actually agree with many of the reasons I find literature to be a valuable tool in life. Describing poetry and largely the written word she questions WHY we should care, “Could it be that not-understanding or wondering is more honest and even less violent than knowing?”. It seems that in our current cultural zeitgeist there is an incessant need to be right and know all. Spanning from politicians to stand-up comics there is a consistent theme found in their speaking. Certainty. Everyone must back their positions with one hundred percent certainty. I am at fault in this too. Constantly thinking I am right. The ages of 16-19 were ripe with a lack of conversing; any alternative point was a contention for argument and not understanding. I feel that my knowledge gained from the variety of English courses I have taken over the years has allowed me to slowly kill this part of me. I have been able to internalize that understanding is not always a net negative within assuring your own character. It is an interesting part of our culture that most points seem to ascertain the character of their speaker rather than create an argument for the sake of truly caring about a topic. In this way I think literature further embarks upon the topic of empathy. Rather than making an argument to back your own morality, the arguments more closely come from a place of true care. 

Furthermore, Gregory Currie argues that “We are poor at knowing why we make the choices we do, and we fail to recognize the tiny changes in circumstances that can shift us from one choice to another. When it comes to other people, can you be confident that your intelligent, socially attuned and generous friend who reads Proust got that way partly because of the reading?” I actually do believe that literature does not fundamentally change a persons personality or life. I have read a multitude of books and have never felt like I might change my life because of them. Instead I think its a combination of the environment you’re in and your mental state when reading the book that makes the most concise impact on your ability to change. You must want to change. Not for the sake of others but the sake of you. It is important to learn for the importance of yourself.

The little things.

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For as long as I can remember, I have deeply cared about the little things. I was always overly sensitive to those around me, overly in tune with people’s emotions, and spent my time constantly observing everything and everyone closely.

Still, to this day, I find myself in the same position. It means a lot to me to pay attention, to notice, to watch, and to feel. And although this was characteristic of me during my early childhood, throughout my teenage years, I so desperately wanted to get away from that part of me.

Through those years, it felt like I paid too much attention, noticed too much, and felt too deeply every second of it. I always felt like no one else saw all the little things I did, nor did they care about them like me. And in the mix of my awkward teenage angst and constant emotional turmoil, I found poetry.

This newfound world of reading and writing was a world where I felt, for the first time, completely understood. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by other people who noticed, watched, and felt the same way I did. At the same depth that I did. And as I was introduced to this new world, I found myself writing poetry every single day.

For me, it felt like the only place I could truly be honest about everything happening in my life. I wrote poems about my familial issues, my relationships with friends at school, overwhelming thoughts of my existence and my place in the world, the great burden of my feelings and how much I cared, and about all the little things around me that everyone else seemed to take for granted but I didn’t.

This fundamental aspect of poetry is what Patrick Rosal mentions in the New York Times article we read for class, “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise.” He describes poetry as encompassing “observation and attention, reflection and memory, description, imagination, re-seeing and discovery.” All of these are what drew me into poetry. 

In middle school was the first time that poetry was taught in my English class. My teacher, Mr. Eleftheriadis, introduced me to Homer and Shakespeare, and it was that class that changed everything.

Not only did I fall in love with literature, poetry, and epics, but I fell in love with the details in every story. A part of his class I enjoyed the most was picking apart works line by line. As a middle schooler, my little brain was not nearly prepared for the sheer wisdom and magic that are laced between every line of the Odyssey and Macbeth, just to name a few.

In his class, I felt that I truly belonged. In every English class since then, I have always felt that way. The peers in them, the teachers and professors, and most of all, the literature have always been so inspiring and remain reminders that when it comes to noticing and feeling, I am not alone.

Since then and throughout my college career, I have been learning each and every day to return back to that little girl version of myself. I have been realizing that I want to notice, I want to watch closely, and I want to feel every second of it. I take pride in noticing the small things, paying attention, and caring immensely about the details.

As I have gotten older, I have learned that these are actually great strengths of mine, and the places where I can cultivate and grow them are in my English classes and in my photography classes. In both art mediums, I have found that my particular gift of noticing and feeling can be used to create narratives and stories, cultivate emotion through images, and learn how to intersect the two.

In an article that discusses the value and significance of poetry as a free space for language and politics, “Why All Poems Are Political” by Kathleen Ossip, she says so many things about poetry that I found incredibly intriguing, inspiring, and thought-provoking. One of the questions she asks in this article is:

“Is it possible that poetry wants to awaken your awareness of the essential and infinitely subtle suffering and joy of being alive?”

I found this question incredibly reflective of what poetry does to us. And I think it is true that poetry is about awakening, awakening to the world around us, taking note of all the things people fail to notice, and feeling all the emotions swirling about in the world. Poetry is about awakening to a world full of people who see and feel at the same depth that you do. Poetry is about a community of people who care; it is about no longer feeling alone.

“If It’s Not STEM, You’re Wasting Your Time” Debunked

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Like many other individuals, my journey toward committing to the study of literature was contested by most of my family. My father and his family have always held the belief that unless you’re majoring in STEM during undergraduate studies, you’re wasting your time. This is not uncommon among South Asian households, and while I was never very close to my father or that side of my family, this belief was heavily ingrained in me during childhood.

My mother and her family were mostly indifferent. However, many of them, including my mother, dedicated their lives to the medical field. I subsequently believed that a nursing career would best suit me both financially and emotionally, but after briefly treading down this path I realized I was putting forth the effort solely seeking validation and support from my family. When I graduated high school I was unsure of what I wanted to study in college, so instead I decided to join the United States Air Force, during which I was a C-130J Loadmaster. This aircrew job provided me an environment rich with freedom as a young adult to explore what was most important to me.

an early USAF photo of myself, 2017

During childhood, I grew up in a chaotic household where having the quiet and comfortability to read literature was generally impossible. But in my down time while I was serving, I began to collect novels and immerse myself in them. It became clear that literature had a special place in my heart, and that I just didn’t quite have the necessary conditions in childhood to explore this passion fully. After honorably separating, I had many conversations with my partner about what discipline I would pursue in college. I once again grappled with the notion that nursing would be best, but after trial and error I finally settled on taking classes focused on literature, creative writing, history, and cultural and film studies.

During my first academic year of taking these classes, I experienced an identity crisis. I knew these disciplines made me feel alive and excited me in ways I hadn’t been before, but I couldn’t help feeling that perhaps my father was right: I’m wasting my time. A quote from Jasmine Guillory’s article titled ‘Reading Anti-Racist Nonfiction Is a Start. But Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction’ really resonates with me when I think back on this period in my life, which was only a year ago: 

“I’ve read so many books about people who are nothing like me—often by necessity, since I can think of only one book I was assigned to read in my entire K-12 education that was about a Black girl or woman—and I’ve learned something from many of them. As characters confront events and situations we’ve never experienced, fiction helps us imagine how we would deal with them.”

Aside from being half South Asian, and knowing all too well how it feels for individuals like me to be underrepresented in literature studies in the classroom, this quote makes me think about why literature is a passion of mine and why my pursuit of it as a discipline is integral to my emotional and mental well-being.

Part of my experience in childhood of growing up in a mostly chaotic household was being stripped of social development with my peers. My mother, a single parent, uprooted our lives by moving nearly every single year. I eventually, at some point, grew exhausted at making friends in a new city because I knew our stay there would be short lived. I became distant from my peers, keeping to myself as a coping mechanism, and this largely impacted my ability to relate to those around me and form close connections.

Literature, however, has helped me glean information that I largely missed out on in childhood. Reading about The Great Perhaps in John Green’s ‘Looking for Alaska,’ for example, gave me insight on the nuances of being a teenager and interacting with one’s peers. Literature gives me a chance to put myself into experiences I missed out on, or like in Gabrielle Zevin’s ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,’ ones I will not experience at any point in my life.

My study of literature has drastically developed my ability to feel empathy for others and has shaped how I approach many relationships as a young adult, especially with those journeying through life at differing ages and in differing paths than myself. Guillory’s words remind me of why I chose to study literature when coming to college, and how with each class I take, the breadth of my knowledge in people and experiences expands, further cementing my choice. 

photo of Jennette McCurdy’s ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died,’ featuring my cat Zora


But that doubt I’ve had within myself throughout my young adult years has not solely been because of my family’s influences. I’ve also found literature to be quite intimidating at times. While my childhood largely impacted my ability to immerse myself in literature, it was not as if I could never attempt enjoying a novel or a poem.

I can recall many times throughout grade school when I was assigned a certain text in one of my language arts classes and became overwhelmingly discouraged by the complex diction used or ideas being expressed. Or perhaps it was a piece I picked up in a thrift store which I had convinced my mother to buy for me. Many times, I felt discouraged away from literature because I could not fully understand it. This was not a lack of intelligence on my part, but more so a lack of patience.

As a young adult, I’ve slowly yet surely been cultivating this sense of patience that’s integral to studying literature. Which is why Traci Smith’s article titled ‘Wipe that Smirk Off Your Poem’ resonates with me. When I first read, “Poems infatuated with their own smarts and detached from any emotional grounding can leave the reader feeling lonely, empty and ashamed for having expected more,” I felt a brief sense of relief like finally someone recognizes my own frustration. Poetry, for me, was mostly off putting during my childhood because of its, what I thought at the time, mostly flowery and overcomplicated diction and syntax. Even as a young adult, I still do feel this way at times. It’s not beside me to admit that the novel is much more alluring to me than the poem.

However, with the study of literature comes that necessary discomfort at times to venture into the unknown and peculiar, to further my understanding of the world as I do and do not know it. The benefits continually prove to be immense and my love for the discipline steadily increases with time.

Turning to Literature

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Growing up as a middle sister, I learned many lessons through the experiences of my older and younger sisters. I was constantly seeking to protect them, understand them, and support them, even when their struggles, triumphs, achievements, disappointments or goals were different than my own. However, this closeness changed and shifted as I grew up and we all attended different boarding schools. As I began studying French literature, I found myself deeply connected to Marcel Proust and Levi-Strauss. Their perspectives on how to handle themselves, their own darkness, their thoughts and perspectives on the world and how they conceptualized their reality all served as models to me when I was doubtful or struggling to understand my own reality. Feeling a connection to another person through their writing gave me great peace when I needed it most. Just as Steve Martin felt after reading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, a story about a quest for knowledge, I felt that through learning, and reading in particular, I “could have secrets possessed only by a few” (Hitz 28). That’s what people need most in their youth, some words of guidance, which I think literature can provide, which in turn can make people, if not better human beings, at least feel better for a period of time in their lives.

Throughout my life, literature has provided me with guidance, reassurance and a sense of comfort. I’m inclined to believe that my personal experience serves as enough evidence for me to believe that literature makes people “better,” kinder, and softer. In “Does Great Literature Make Us Better?,” Gregory Currie argues that there lacks “causal evidence: we need to show that exposure to literature itself makes some sort of positive difference to the people we end up being.” I would include myself in the group of individuals who “will probably soldier on with a positive view of the improving effects of literature, supported by nothing more than an airy bed of sentiment.” But that airy bed of sentiment is all the evidence I need! After all, if literature has the capacity to show us how to relate to others, find connection and find solace in it, then I think that literature has improving effects on people, whether those effects are short-term or long-term probably depends on the person.

I was particularly fond of Currie’s reference to Martha Bussbaum’s book “Love’s knowledge,” in which she argues that narrative form gives literary fiction “a peculiar power to generate moral insight.” I love this! Narratives have a beginning, middle and end. It’s nice to read a story that presents a character, a challenge, a (hopefully) journey towards overcoming obstacles and eventual triumph. I agree that narratives would generate moral insight by allowing us to see the beginning, middle and end of a tale, imparting a lesson or wisdom to the reader.

I agree that reading can help us to empathize with other human beings, in addition to helping us connect with ourselves.  In the article “Does reading fiction make us better people?,” Hammond discusses how books can teach us about the world, especially through our identification with characters in books. The article states, “without necessarily even noticing, we imagine what it’s like to be [the characters] and compare their reactions to situations with how we responded in the past, or imagine we might in the future.” Reading stories gives us the opportunity to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to empathize with another person’s experience, to dive into another culture, assume a different perspective. Specifically when reading fiction, the reader is more likely to “suspend disbelief without questioning the veracity of what people are saying,” and view a characters life over a span of time, even many years. For me, reading fiction and other literature, has given me the ability not only to better understand human beings, but also to better understand myself. I have found comfort in knowing that my struggles, challenges or feelings at a certain point in my life are shared by another person (an author, character, sociologist, philosopher).

English Major in the Business World

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Throughout my life, I have always been naturally in tune with the world of reading, writing, and thinking. I’m a big feeler and intrinsically identified with the emotive, the introspective, and the passionate.

 My parents— big in the business and finance fields— were NOT happy when I told them I was going to be an English teacher. But I knew that it was something I had to do for myself. After my first shot at student teaching, I quickly came to realize that being a high-school English teacher is A LOT more than just loving literature and wanting to share that passion with your students. I truly couldn’t see myself restrained by academic legislation and confined in a classroom for the majority of my career. Although, reading “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” reignited the spark I have for sharing the joy of reading and writing. I loved when Rosal wrote,

“Not enough is about how everyday people are moved by poems. Truth is, they are hungry for it — especially when it’s written, read, performed and listened to with the whole body. If you saw the audience at Brave New Voices this week or the young folks at Sarah Lawrence College’s Summer High School Writing Conference, you’d see a heightened listening. Educators crave that kind of listening.”

And that is completely true— educators do crave that kind of engagement.

I remember distinctly when my best friend was student teaching in the classroom (English I, a majority Spanish-speaking class) with me and she gave a short lesson on poetry. She had the students (most of whom usually put their heads on the desk and slept throughout the period) rip pages out of old novels and magazines to create blackout poems. It was one of the most amazing things to witness as these incredibly frustrated and uninspired kids turned in not just one but multiple beautiful blackout poems. Getting to read them afterward was so rewarding because the students finally got a chance to express themselves and let out their emotions in a healthy way at school.

Being able to be part of that is something I will remember forever and makes me wish that teachers would receive the salaries that they so incredibly deserve. Reflecting on my time at the high school makes me remember Jasmine Guilllory’s article “Reading Anti-Racist Nonfiction Is a Start. But Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction.” She says,

“Multiple studies have shown that reading certain types of fiction increases a reader’s empathy for others. Fiction gives you a window into both lives you know and recognize and ones you don’t It helps you to put yourself in the shoes of those characters, even when you have a different perspective when it comes to race, gender, or sexual identity.”

I will never forget the feeling of absolute dread in the room at 8am as the kids staggered in knowing they were going to be forced to read and write about stories that were so out of touch with their realities. It’s just common sense but you can read about the value of black fiction for black children and teens here.

After months of reflecting during my student teaching semester, I discussed heavily with my parents, peers, and advisors, about if I should explore other career paths. The harsh reality is that I would not be able to support myself, let alone a future family as an English teacher. With a lot of back and forth and inner turmoil, I cut my degree in Education short and decided to pick up a Marketing minor. And this has been one of the best decisions of my life so far. With the heavy support of my advisors and professors, I learned there is so much you can do in the business world with an English degree. Effective communication and critical thinking are major skills needed in marketing and sales-oriented careers. I’m experiencing every day the joys of expanding my professional network in the Business School while working towards a career in medical device sales. I feel like I’m in a space where I get the best of both worlds.

Pluto (black), Penny (tabby), and Maple (tortie)

I Hate AI

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I’ve always been an emotional, sensitive person; my mom once said that no one would care as much as I did. I’m almost totally sure this is why I feel literature or any piece of writing so deeply. Even if it doesn’t directly relate to me or any category that I fit into, I know that the person who does relate–if it’s written well–will be affected in a positive way and that meant something to me. Poetry and fiction were made to be emotional even if it’s not directly the story’s tone. The novel may not be sad by the author’s choice, but when we read we connect with characters we may have never met in real life or never could have related to in passing. One of the books that first inspired this in me is Sharon M. Draper’s novel “Out of My Mind.” This was one of the only books I have read multiple times, I’m not a big fan of rereading my books, but I couldn’t help but I love that book; even if it made me cry, I wanted to be the main character again and feel her stress and eventual triumph. 

To me, English, writing, and any form of words have always been about emotion and being able to be empathetic. I felt sad for every character, every author, every imaginary person that’s reading it in the past, present, or future. Like Jasmine Guillory in her article “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction” I felt very deeply what the characters were feeling. I’ll find something in every character that’s similar to me or take something from each character and I take a piece of the story with me. Maybe it’s odd for me to say I find something like myself in every character I read, but honestly, as someone who wants to create things—create films, novels, something tangible—I want everyone to find a book that they see themselves in. I think that the whole point of reading is finding those shared experiences or discovering your feelings along with the character. And I think that’s part of why I also want to write is because I want to be able to experience so many things that I feel like the way to do that is through reading and literature, it’s not just going places within a book, you get to experience so many people’s lives. I want to be them and take a little bit with me too. 

A lot of what we read this past week stuck with me because it talked so much about the emotions surrounding the English language and literature. Former US poet laureate Tracy Smith spoke in her opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Wipe that Smirk Off Your Poem” about how now poetry authors have the tendency to steer towards irony almost as if they’re afraid of being made fun of for being too emotional or too cheesy in their work. In turn, I think that has turned a lot of people off to poetry. One quote from Smith stood out to me in her piece, “Irony refuses to be life-giving or world-creating. Irony negates wish.” I think as a society we have become so steeped in irony that a large portion of people have decided to stay away from any sort of emotion as a sort of protection. If we aren’t vulnerable we cannot be hurt, but isn’t being empathetic and vulnerable part of what it means to be human. In a larger conversation on another day, this is why the issue of artificial intelligence concerns me. With the development and improvement of AI it makes me wonder if we will ever be able to return to openly being emotional, without shame or worry for compassion. I firmly believe that as humans we were made to create stories to deal with our emotions and share our experiences, none of which artificial intelligence could replicate. The act of reading fiction or poetry was created with the purpose of empathy and I was made to care.

Cats Cuddling: 23 Purrfect Moments Of Furry Feline Love - I Can Has Cheezburger?

works cited

Agarwal, Pragya. “Emotional Ai Is No Substitute for Empathy.” Wired, Conde Nast, 31 Dec. 2022, www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-empathy/.

Guillory, Jasmine. “Jasmine Guillory on the Importance of Reading Black Fiction.” Time, Time, 30 June 2020, time.com/5861861/jasmine-guillory-black-fiction/.

Smith, Tracy K. “Does Poetry Matter?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2015, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/18/does-poetry-matter/wipe-that-smirk-off-your-poem.

Emotions vs. Science

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Reading has been a part of my life ever since I could remember. As the daughter of a teacher and a writer, consuming literature was ingrained in my daily routine. As I progressed in school and grew up in general, literature became more of an escape, away from weird teenage emotions and mean kids in the lunchroom. It became a place where I could trade my own emotions for another’s for a minute or two. That’s why I found Claudia Hammond’s article titled “Does Reading Fiction Make Us Better People?” so interesting because it introduces an argument that backs up people’s emotional attachment to books in general. Hammond seems to link empathy as the main trait of being a better person, and while empathy is a good trait to possess, one could say it takes a whole lot more than empathy to be labeled as a good person in society.

Nevertheless, Hammond explains various experiments that research people and how empathetic they are based on either being an avid fictional reader or having just read a short piece of fiction. By the end of the article, Hammond seems to believe in her argument that reading fictional literature unlocks an empathetic trait in people. I do believe that consuming fictional literature has made me more in tune with my emotions and able to see them in other people. But I do not think that empathy is the only emotion that we should take into consideration when asking the question if literature makes a person better or not.

My thought is that all literature is intentional, always carefully planned, and edited until the last second. Society does not work that way; it is chaotic, messy, and unexpected. I do find that the experiments themselves are engaging, and the prose is compelling, asking a good question that links literature to how we as people function in a society. I just found that the research focuses mostly on the empathy in others rather than allowing other emotions to be categorized as well when people consume fictional literature.

At my high school, the English classrooms were clumped together in one old, dingy hallway, while the science classrooms spanned two gigantic hallways that had been recently renovated when I got there. From then on, those two subjects—science and the humanities—were always pitted against each other, and where I grew up, it seemed that science was the more favorable one.I believe that’s when I realized that reading books was more than a hobby for me, when there was time for a choice. The choice had never been easier.

That’s why I found Patrick Rosal’s argument titled “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” which presents the dispute that poetry and science go hand in hand rather than being opposites of one another. From this article, I am able to understand why people pick science, why there is even a choice in the first place, and why there doesn’t have to be anymore. Rosal states, “poetry and science are kin.” These two subjects share much in common, even when neither party wants to acknowledge it. I believe the most prominent similarity that they share is “observation” (Rosal). Observation is how poetry gets written; the subject that is observed gets described by the poet on paper. Observation in science is the foundation for any solid hypothesis.

The simplicity of Rosal’s list of similarities struck me because there were only five reasons, but each brought multiple examples to mind. From there, I could actually believe the argument that science and poetry, or the humanities, are similar in various ways. The two do not have to go hand in hand, but we, as a society, should “give them enough space and support to work in solitude but talk together too.” (Rosal). As shown, these two subjects can work together, but neither has to be favorable to the other.

Life is interdisciplinary: a defense of the literary as practical

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The Team at the Pediatric Service of Remembrance
A labyrinth for grieving families to use

My parents questioned my major choice. My dad, of course, wanted me to go straight to med school (“I know you’re a senior, but if you want to stay a few more years and take the pre-reqs…”), and my mom – well, she smiled and asked me “are you sure?”

I’ve realized that no matter what discipline I end up in, I’m going to have to learn how to think in an interdisciplinary nature. Each text read in an English class ends up discussing a social/political/economic issue. Further, I’m minoring in Medical Humanities and Jewish Studies. My minors, in combination with my major, have led me to pursue a career in end-of-life healthcare, specifically law concerning bioethics and the elderly. So even if I tried my very hardest to avoid thinking this way, it would be impossible. When it comes down to it, the most personal and private pieces of ourselves seem to find their ways into the wide open at the end of life. I’ve worked as a palliative care volunteer for the past few years, sitting by the bedside when someone is dying alone, or providing respite for a family member who just needs to go eat or shower.

Although I’m some random kid, people decide to tell me everything – from stories of their favorite family meals to trauma and abuse stories. Although this is the career I want to go into, there is no possible way to approach it coldly. Every aspect of the job requires delicacy and empathy, or at least an attempt at empathy. I have found that even though I don’t always find the right words, the attempt is worth it. When I see how the patients are treated, I realize why this matters. It’s not that the doctors or nurses are bad people – in fact, they’re absolutely amazing — but the modern American medical system simply focuses on the maximum number of tests and divisions between parts of the body and their corresponding hospital teams, which results in the patient feeling left behind. So how could I, being one bright-eyed kid, do anything about it? Well, it started with reading about the subject – both fiction and non-fiction.

I took a course called Religion, Healthcare, and Ethics, and we read work from bioethics experts, religious experts, and laypeople. Here’s where it all got started – I learned about topics I had never heard of (namely, palliative care and how it’s different from hospice) and re-evaluated my viewpoints. I found my personal religious views challenged, and I was excited. As Jasmine Guillory acknowledges in her TIME article, “Reading Anti-Racist Nonfiction Is a Start. But Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction,” “[m]ultiple studies have shown that reading certain types of fiction increases a reader’s empathy for others in the world. Fiction gives you a window into both lives you know and recognize and ones you don’t” (Guillory). 

Guillory’s article is specifically about reading Black fiction as an act of anti-racism. She’s 100% right, but her argument expands to helping understand anyone different from you. Whatever your difference, reading about it can give you a better understanding (although not always a correct or close to complete understanding). For me, Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal was a great start. But one could simply respond: well, that’s your career, not mine, and I need something practical. 

In his New York Times Op-Ed, “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” author Patrick Rosal asks a simple question:

“For whom?”

Who is poetry for, he asks. He continues on, stating that “you may want something ‘practical’” (Rosal). And haven’t each of us heard that a million times – just like the way my dad said it. But it means something different to me. On my first day as a volunteer with palliative care, I didn’t know what to do. I was so nervous that I was sweating through my shirt, and I actually got lost in the hospital. It was terrifying, and the whole time, I was thinking “what if it doesn’t do anything?” “What if I just can’t find the right words?” I always thought that I needed something practical. I asked the few others on the team if they had some sort of guidebook, and they pretty much just laughed at me. 

But what I realized is that the words that we offer are the concrete and practical business. Everyday we interact with people and without proper and effective communication, nothing is going to happen. And further, everyone’s going to feel bad about it. Using the right language is the foundation of a successful process and career.

So maybe I don’t know how to be a surgeon, or how to diagnose an illness, but because of literature, I feel equipped with the everyday decisions as well as the end-of-days decisions.