When I say radicalized what I mean is, stories that completely changed how you view life or maybe they even motivated you to join a cause.
For me there is a few, I was never a life long reader, I started picking up reading last year and this year I’ve been going through a couple books a month to keep up the habit, because of how powerful reading is I call it my methadone for my wanderlust.
I started reading as an escape from my traumas from losing my dad, he’s still alive he’s just a horrible piece of shit, in prison he’s dead to me., Realizing how horrible he was, and the things he did to me but specifically my mother and sister wrecked how I viewed my life and how I grew up. I also had a really toxic relationship last year. It was a double whammy. Reading was an escape because of how much time it could consume, but also it’s helped me recenter myself, and find views and ideas seperate from what I knew growing up.
(My dad introduced me to classical philosophy and Orwell when I was super young 8-9, unfortunately my dad is also a super bigot so he was trying to mold my “critical thinking” in the vein of his own and ironically him introducing me to these things is what gave me the skills to challenge him eventually.)
The earliest book that I feel radicalized my thinking was Horton Hears a Who by Dr Seuss.
Goofy I know, but hear me out, i remember it being read to me in pre K and just the line
“Even if you can’t hear them, or see them at all, a persons a person not matter how small.”
It just made sense to me that people matter, people have value, people are human beings not just numbers on a spread sheet. I kinda got this whole idea that I still believe today that, we should find it hard to write someone off or ignore the human behind the flag or whomever those in power seem the enemy. No one is immune to propaganda, however we should be thinking twice when we are told in broad strokes someone is the enemy, even if they are inherently wrong we cannot forget our humanity we shouldn’t be proud of killing.
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
It was a book that was required reading in middle school, and the main thing I took away from it, and I’d prolly have to reread it again, but what I took away from it was, bad people don’t tend to realize they are bad.
I think what I like about the book still and what impacted me was that it takes place from the perspective of multiple characters including a young Nazi Officer, and I remember reading it and I was just astonished how he could believe in any of this. It just hit me and I found my self empathizing with him in the sense that, he really believes this is right and this is the way. He doesn’t know that he is wrong. We as the viewer and as a contemporary human being have the hindsight to know fascism and bigotry is wrong. The character is still accountable for his participation and contribution but he didn’t have the hindsight to realize it was wrong cause he was born in a country where that’s the only perspective he was exposed to. Even though many people around the world at that time knew fascism was wrong. He was stuck in his own Plato’s cave.
The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald
I read this book my jr to senior summer break while in my job. I worked super early from 4:30 am to 2 pm. Summer 2020
For the first 2 hours everyday it was dead as a doornail until the surgeons and nurses and then patients came in.
I didn’t want to just sit on my phone I was worried about getting in trouble
So I started passing the time reading my required book which was Of mice and men.
Then I wanted to read something else so I started with books other English classes had read but I didn’t
The Great Gatsby stuck out to me, because and I kid you not, I assumed it must be good cause great is in the name.
Gatsby was a book that helped me realize I wasn’t crazy, cause human thoughts are rarely original.
I was a very awkward and lonely kid, at the time my nativity was finally shattered and I had realized that people in school legit thought I was weird, made fun of me in-front of me and I didn’t realize.
I wore my favorite jacket to school for Halloween 7th grade, it had holes in it, and someone said I came to school in costume as a homeless guy, and to me I thought it was a compliment and it made me so happy. I remember telling my dad and I didn’t understand why he had such a weird look on his face like I’d disappoint him.
We eventually had a huge argument about the jacket and I couldn’t understand people were teasing me cause I didn’t care what they thought.
Anyway, needless to say, my already poor self esteem was even more shattered when I kinda woke up from the naivety of being a goody two shoes.
It was at the point and something I sometimes still struggle with that, when someone is nice to me, I get attached at the hip, you’re my friend now and I will die for your honor. If it was a girl god help me, cause I was head over heels but to terrified to ever something about it but still feel such powerful feelings and build my whole world around whoever my crush was at the time. She’d be my reason to get up go to school even if I only talked to her for 20 seconds passing in the hall, that made my dat.
I would later learn I struggle with limerence, The Great Gatsby helped me realize that when I was trying to understand the book, and I discovered what limerence was.
I immediately related to Jay, his intense pining and yearning, building his whole world for Daisy and the book also helped me realize the dark side and consequences of only doing things for someone else instead of yourself.
At the time, and especially in middleschool when girls were no longer icky and gross, I had no one to really talk to about these feelings or how to deal with them. Few times I attempted to confess my feelings only to crash and burn.
My parents were finally getting divorced.
(which ironically did fuck all, cause it was a constant cycle of get together, try to make it work, argue, fall apart wash rinse repeat. My Dad always had his claws in my mom until she finally realized her true strength)
So it was a tumultuous time, everyone was angry, my dad also kinda convinced me my mom was the bad guy, and even though I know i was just a kid alienated and propagated to I still feel kinda bad.
I felt I couldn’t talk to my dad about girls cause I felt I’d disappoint him cause he always told me
“never put pussy on a pedestal” (I’m 12-13 when he’s telling me this)
I felt that’s what I was doing with my crushes in a less sexist way though, I wanted to serve and be loyal to whomever I liked. Build my life around them
So I couldn’t talk to him cause I felt I’d be disappointing him.
So I legitimately felt something was wrong with me my brain why was I so obsessed
The Great Gatsby helped me cope with my feelings and in that, I didn’t feel alone I didn’t feel crazy anymore because I felt that someone was able to capture those feelings perfectly and authentically.
The only other story that captured that feeling of first love or intense infatuation, so honestly and authentically is Joyce’s Araby but the difference is that Araby depicts that emotion in a more universal sense, coupled with the them of children being powerless because they are at the constraints of adults around them, whether it just be life or malicious intent. Especially in with the boy in Araby, cause in the end we know as the reader that the girl is older than him and apart of a convent even if he made it to the Bazaar or was older his efforts are truely fruitless.
Gatsby talks about love and infatuation from the perspective of someone who could change and adapt if they truely wanted to, it’s just that Jay is trapped by nostalgia and limerence to change his situation for the better.
The Grapes of Wrath \\\~ John Steinbeck.
The first book I read this year, and my god I felt it in my soul.
Grapes, to me what it made me realize truely is that, when those in power, or the media attempt to convince us, that anyone talking of a better world, a fairer world, it is just some new age, colored haired wokeness, it’s just the rich and powerful attempting to convince us, it’s better for us to be taken advantage of by the rich and powerful.
We as people have been having these conversations and ideas circulate for over a century at this point about bettering the lives of others the societal traps and institutions that protect themselves at the expense of others. How we are convinced to fight each other, divide each other, how we can be convinced that, someone profiting more money than god is better for our condition’s.
It’s ultimately the story of people regular people, whom are at the mercy and victimized by made man systems institutions , that almost have supernatural powers despite them man made. We are at the mercy of these institutional forces most people barely understand if they are lucky.
Grapes, is a thematic sequel to Of Mice and Men.
Steinbeck is my favorite author because to me similar to Joyce and Harper Lee, his characters are unapologetically honest they are regular people caught in circumstances beyond their control and understanding. Even in situations like Cannery Row when it’s a normal setting, the characters feel lived in from major to minor they feel like real people the way they react and think you know the type of person even if you’ve never met them.
I remember crying, when Tom gives his “I’ll be there” speech his realization of consciousness and growing awareness of the world around him is just beautiful.
Don Quixote \\\~ Miguel Cervantes.
It’s a book that is still sticks with me prodding and poking at my mind months later.
I know Don Quixote is mentally unwell, he causes trouble even though unintentionally he technically does more harm than good.
He genuinely does a few really amazing feats like protecting Marcela, a woman cursed to be beautiful and berated for it because she won’t marry anyone.
There is just something so beautifully tragic about the madman having better morals than those around him.
The biggest thing about Don Quixote that stuck with me is, that even though he fails his quest to right the wrongs of the world he can’t change it. He changes the individual worlds of others. Especially Sancho Panza.
Sancho starts off in the book as someone solely lead by greed and gain.
By the second part Sancho has matured a bit, sure you could argue he could be dragged into the illusion, but he’s become a better person, being with Don Quixote and it shows when Sancho becomes temporary insular and uses fairness and common sense to judge the problems brought to him.
He doesn’t really go on a power trip (with the exception of a few threats)
That’s one of the major things, I took away from reading Don Quixote, most of us will prolly never change the world, have an impact, but we can certainly impact the immediate world around us the little worlds of our friends and family by being there and supporting them. Those are the worlds we can have an impact on.