The lens of literature

Something I’ve noticed while going through college is that some things that you once adored can escape you amidst the hodge-podge of experiences that university life can offer and only reappear when you little expect it. The classes, the activities, the political engagement, the cultural learning, the part-time jobs, the friendships all contribute to the often irregular rhythms and overwhelming nature of student life. Many of us feel compelled to try new things, to experience things we never have before, because we’re still young enough that we are more than willing to envision changes in our own lives and in the world we must continue to inhabit.

I came into Duke knowing that I wanted to major in linguistics and analyze words through the lens of modern social science. I knew I wanted to study an array of languages. And lastly, I knew that I was enchanted by books and literature since a young age and wanted to take formal classes on how the written word could be used as artistry to convey stories and paint elaborate pictures. While I pursued the former two all the way to the end of my time at Duke, I never ended up majoring or minoring in something literature related. I felt that with a full schedule of classes, activities and day-to-day socializing with friends, it was hard to enjoy books in the way I wanted to. Reading became a rote academic chore—how many words I could feed my brain before I could write a sufficient Sakai post to get by that day in class. I could no longer truly get lost in a book, and the millennial generation’s collective addiction to social media started to shorten my attention span little by little.

A passion of mine began to slip away from me, and a part of me regrets that. But not reading as much fiction on my own time meant that I got to spend more time to listening to the stories of friends and classmates. I got to get involved in political happenings inside the classroom and out and learn about unequally stratified power that privileges certain narratives and silences others. And so this hiatus from frequent fiction reading made me question the literary works that had already nourished me and shaped me growing up. When you study American literature in high school, for example, the reading list speaks volumes about how high school students in the U.S. should view the major voices in the country. Images of Europeanness and whiteness, Protestantism, wealthy or middle-class status, conquering the American frontier and cisheterosexual romance are elevated. Communities of color, religious minorities, the working class and queer and trans people many times are depicted as non-normative, sidekicks for the protagonists or simply not represented at all.

Representation alone will not cause systemic problems to disappear, but it can validate the experiences of people in the community that might usually be talked about on the national platform. Representation can provide role models for children who, to date, do not have many options of fictional characters who look like them and whose stories they can identify with. And representation might also not only bring joy to marginalized communities but can also hold majority groups accountable to intentionally and actively striving to coexist more equitably.

I’m all for promoting literary and artistic work that sparks political consciousness and dialogue. But I don’t always feel like picking up books that read like Jacques Derrida’s verbose philosophy or a public policy memo. When I read fiction, I want to read the stories of people in their wholeness; I want to experience life figuratively through their eyes. I want the wonder of a new world to give me a fresh perspective on my own path through life. I want to devour words because of the beauty that lies in their sounds and orthography. I want stories to exist for both the selfish reason of providing happiness and comfort for me as an individual reader and also for the reason of creating more public consciousness about the rich diversity that makes our country and our world.

Representation in literature alone will not spark change. The quality of education in literacy and language depends highly on school systems and their access to economic resources. American school systems must continue to reform until resources are more equitable and until desegregation is fully realized, so that all children will be believed in and will be encouraged to pursue the fields they want to. In any nation, striving toward justice in the realm of literature, media and education might not be a number one issue tackled by policymakers, but it is inherently tangled up with all the issues affecting society.

It feels as if I left my frequent pastime of fiction reading for a short hiatus. But on this break, I’ve been pondering whose stories need to be heard the most, whose accounts I need to open my heart to listening to and what stories I want to tell throughout my life and career. I guess now’s the time to go in search of lost time.

Drew Korschun is a Trinity senior. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.