A Reading Rx
Finding the right book at the right time
I’ve written here before about my great-grandfather, the poet. This week, another great-grandfather, Fred Salinas, is on my mind. He’s a bit more of a mystery in the family line so this is what I know: he was born on Galveston island the same year as its “Great Storm” which claimed the lives of thousands (to this day, it remains the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record). He grew to be a pharmacist by trade, and somehow - the story is lost to history now - he made his way to the family ranch of my great-grandmother, Carolina, and married her. She was from a family of seven siblings (mostly sisters), all of whom were deeply connected to the land - to the animals, plants, and birds of central-south Texas, to the beautiful and harsh landscape of that region. I imagine that Fred was more cosmopolitan given his education and upbringing, so perhaps it was a compromise that they would move together to the border, which is to say the river, a place where both had ancestral ties. This move also offered the benefits of small-town commerce amidst an expanse of rural brush. Best of both worlds, so to speak. There, they set up shop. Together they managed a pharmacy on 2nd street - Fred compounding tinctures and syrups at the front counter, and Carolina creating herbal offerings from the ranch-remedies of her childhood in the back. Or so the story goes. I imagine that it takes all kinds of medicine to heal a community.
I have often thought about books this way. Since I began teaching, probably from the very first lesson, I have encountered students who gleefully assert: I am not a reader. I don’t always know what this means—is it a defense? Or a challenge? Though it probably stems from a mix of psychic soil, I have mostly taken it to be the latter. Because it isn’t always just a matter of the book itself, but the particular moment you find it, wherever you are in the space and time of your life. Whatever the healing is you need just then.
When I was contemplating motherhood—before I had my first son—I remember reading Rebecca Walker’s Baby Love, Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions, then, once I was in the eye of the storm with a newborn, Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work, and Lisa Marchiano’s Motherhood. I don’t know who I would be as a woman and mother—or how I would have managed through those early days—without these books, these voices. They all spoke to the ambivalence of becoming and being a mother, both the unimaginable depth of love that suddenly wells within alongside the battering of self that occurs in tandem. I also sought out, probably more subconsciously than consciously, fiction that spoke to the depths of mother-love and the grief it implies—Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking about This and Ramona Ausbel’s short story collection A Guide to Being Born. And, as is my firm belief, the complexity of life can often only truly be rendered in book-form. It cannot come through in an Instagram post, a tweet, a viral video. It really does take hundreds of pages to hold even a small glimpse of what it means to be human.
This is why I continue to argue the relevance of full-length books to my students (and anyone else who will listen). The twitchiness of modern life, the demands on our time, and the commodification of attention itself, make books more than a luxury. They are a necessary means to wrest back control of our lives. That is not to say “deep reading” is always easy. Maryanne Wolf’s Reader Come Home, argues that, in fact, it is becoming harder for all of us; even self-professed “readers”. She writes, “Like a phantom limb, you remember who you were as a reader…” and relates that she often struggles through dense materials that would have been quite easy a decade ago. And yet this struggle is important. The “narrative transportation” provided by immersive, long-form reading is a key to unlocking empathy in a fraught and fractious world. As Wolf writes:
We welcome the Other as a guest within ourselves, and sometimes we become Other. For a moment in time we leave ourselves; and when we return, sometimes expanded and strengthened, we are changed both intellectually and emotionally.
This is why I argue we should approach literature as medicine—sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, but always holding the promise of mending. Not only for ourselves but for our society as a whole. For years, I have told my students: you may find a world wholly different from your own, or a likeminded voice that speaks to you as a friend, or a line of argument that challenges what you thought to be true. All of these are possible if you stay open to the book finding you and sitting with it long enough for it to do its work within you. Because it will.
My great-grandparents bridged many worlds with their medicine—two healing traditions, two countries, two cultures—and so it is when we find the “Other” in literature. The encounter between who we are and who we find on the page can create an intellectual partnership, providing a momentary balm of comfort, wisdom, or revelation. This is a magic that happens when the right reader meets the right book.
3 Things Newly Noted
In many ways, this post was inspired by this interview with Maryanne Wolf from last year—if you’re pressed for time or more of a fiction reader, it’s a good overview of her major premise with some fantastic examples and research (she also gives great book recommendations at the end).
I turned 40 on Monday. In keeping with this week’s theme, I sought out recommendations for mid-life transition books from friends, colleagues, the internet writ large—and here are the top five that seemed to surface multiple times (some of which I’ve read, some not): Through the Dark Wood by James Hollis, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Life Events by Karolina Waclawiak, The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (and probably the whole Neapolitan Quartet by extension).
Yesterday was Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning here in the U.S. and the kids have been home all week from school. We have been eating, playing, and lounging a lot. I have gingerly allowed some old-school video games into the screen-time rotation, including the original Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. In a more recent-day blending of the two, we all enjoyed Alto’s Odyssey. Gorgeous game.
See you next Friday!
Thanks for reading. The words and illustrations in this newsletter are handcrafted, algorithm-free, and 100% certified human :)
This publication is currently free so if you’d like to support, please recommend this sub to anyone you think would enjoy it!
Happy Birthday, Allegra! I love your writing and artwork! You amaze me always. Love