the printed world

Read books. Lots of them. Read as many as you can while you can. I tell this to my teenage nephews because they don’t know that time will become a precious commodity. There is never enough time for reading.
Right now the only demands for their free time are sports and streaming. I try to lure them with the promise of new worlds if they’d only allow their eyes to be their passports. They’ve actually had passports for several years, the oldest having traveled to tournaments throughout the eastern States and the youngest went to Portugal for a soccer competition before he was even a pre-teen. But a book can transport without having to pack a bag or go through security checks.

Travel is the most seductive thing about reading. A vaccine wasn’t necessary for me to discover the oppressive humidity of colonial Vietnam. At thirteen I was infected with Francophilia when reading Alexandre Dumas. Reading was simultaneously the cause and the cure for my rabid curiosity. I loved discovering new worlds and was lucky my parents’ bookshelf was a ticket to ride. There was definitely a themed itinerary.
I only have to close my eyes to picture the orange and yellow cover of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, or the mesmerizing black and white image of Huey Newton in a rattan chair with beret and spear. James Baldwin introduced me to Harlem and my future home long before the family trip to Sylvia’s restaurant. But I was also discovering genteel England (Austen), dusty downtrodden middle America (Steinbeck) and the birth of Israel (Uris).

Today as debates rage about addressing racial bias and systemic racism, I can vouch that despite going to a multicultural school in an ethnically diverse Canadian city, my reading list was decidedly Eurocentric. I was learning about worlds different from my own, peeking into windows of families completely unlike mine and listening at the doors of broken lives. But none of my peers were discovering the world I knew or the worlds I’d seen in print. There were no discussions or essays empathizing with brown girls or black boys. I lived in a world apart.

This week there is a call to action to support black writers and demonstrate black publishing power. Purchase two books from any black author for the week of June 14th to propel black titles up the best seller lists. When the self-quarantine started I’d been happy to read from my current surplus of unread books, but I couldn’t resist this call to action. I’m currently waiting for the following titles to arrive, and I couldn’t be more excited.

What’s on your reading list? Please share, I never get tired of swapping book titles.