Stories

In fifth grade I attended a very small, very homogenous, very conservative school. The bookmobile came once a week for library time. We were allowed to check out a maximum of ten books if we thought we could read them all. I could and I did. One week I put Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume on my stack. I wasn’t especially excited about this particular book - it seemed to be about boys younger than I - but by that time in the school year the selection was running a bit thin.

Once at the checkout counter I was told, rather apologetically by the bookmobile librarian, that I wasn’t allowed to check out Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. “Not allowed?” I studied the book, feeling both anxious and incensed.

“Sorry,” she said. “School policy. Nothing by Judy Blume.”

Well. I checked with my teacher who assured me that was, in fact, the school policy. “Some of Blume's books explore themes and topics contrary to our values,” he explained.

That weekend I made my way to the public library downtown, where I checked out Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and, because I was feeling uncharacteristically rebellious, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

The story of Peter and Fudge helped me understand and cope with my own sibling relationships. The story of Margaret helped me understand and cope with growing up, helped me explore my faith - what I believed and why.

It was my first realization of the power of story, how story can connect us to one another and to great universal truths, but also how stories different from our own can incite a fear great enough to censor those stories. Because I was an inherently anxious child, it was books that helped me walk through that fear into a realization that I didn’t have to tremor away from all that was different. Through stories I could understand and respect those differences. Through stories I could fight that fear.

In sixth grade I transferred to a public school and was placed in the classroom of a teacher who read prolifically and encouraged us to do the same. There was no banning of books in her classroom, just wise guidance toward the right book at the right developmental time. She introduced me to Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, to Anne Frank, to Tolkien, to The Great Gilly Hopkins, to Shel Silverstein. There was world out there filled with conflicts and adventures, faith and doubt, injustice and redemption. I soaked in the stories of girls like Margaret who were a lot like me, growing up white and middle class in the suburbs, but also of girls like Cassie Logan, who grew up with dignity in a place of injustice.

We need each other’s stories. In a world where it is so easy to take sides - Republican versus Democrat, Christian versus Muslim, liberal versus conservative, straight versus gay, police officer versus black male - we need to hear each other, to listen, to empathize. We may not agree, but we can understand. People want to know they matter. Stories walk us through the fear of all that is different and into a respect for those people. Because they do matter. Their stories matter.

Indiegogo recently launched a We Need Diverse Books Campaign. Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, who is a brilliant writer and also a good friend (I recently walked into a fifth grade classroom that was reading one of her books aloud and began gushing Oh! Wow! I KNOW her so enthusiastically that those fifth graders now believe her to have celebrity status ranking right up there with a Disney XD star) wrote a blog on Jacqueline Woodson and Daniel Handler's watermelon joke that created impetus behind why We Need Diverse Books.

Because once we understand someone’s story, we can begin to move past fear toward respect, reconciliation, redemption.