Kate Schirmer/The Mossy Log
In elementary and middle school, I was relentlessly bullied. I was alone, a new kid at a microscopically small school with no real way to connect with my peers. So, I found a home in words. I buried my face in books, finding comfort in the fact that a novel would never leer at me, tell me they wished my dog died or that I killed myself, that my acne-ridden face reminded them of pepperoni pizza, that I was a fat pig, that I was annoying and “too much.”
That is when I first read R. J. Palacio’s book “Wonder,” which follows the story of a young boy named Auggie who has significantly different facial features than those of his peers as a result of Treacher-Collins syndrome. Auggie, perpetually excluded and bullied, hides his face behind an astronaut helmet, scared to display to the world his greatest insecurity. By the end of the book, Auggie forms friendships, puts aside his helmet, graduates from fifth grade and overcomes his fear of being rejected and ostracized for his differences.
Later, when the novel was adapted into a film, I sobbed while watching. While the grounds for my bullying were not rooted in as much hate and vitriol as Auggie’s, his story — while fictional — gave me hope. If Auggie could find joy and connections with his peers, I could too. To be clear, the solution to coping with bullying is not as simple as the power a novel holds. However, interacting with stories both vastly different and close to our own experience is truly life-changing.
Engaging with works of fiction that depict characters and settings different from my own shaped my upbringing and understanding of those around me and across the globe. This effect of walking in somebody else’s shoes has been studied — in 2013, a National Institutes of Health study found that engaging in fictional narratives that cause “high emotional transportation” correlates with an increase in empathy over time. Similarly, recent research in cognitive neuroscience reveals that when we read fiction, our brains engage in a process strikingly similar to real-life experience, as if we ourselves had shared the lives of its characters.
Reading fiction is not just mere escapism; it is transportation. Witnessing the lives of others — walking in the proverbial shoes of someone else — is a crucial building block of human interaction, one that can be easily broken down into fictional encounters that later shape the way we view lives apart from our own.
We are living in an age where we are perpetually surrounded by an endless amount of tragedy, and now more than ever, we need to be able to extend empathy for those around us. In the face of genocides across the globe, murders and family separations carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and heightened political polarization, it is imperative that we develop the care we extend to others. It is easy to step back and disengage with the stories of others under the logic of “not my circus, not my monkeys,” but there is a societal crisis concerning that thinking. Our fellow citizens of the world are our proverbial monkeys, and the circus of life is all of ours to share — I strongly believe that reading fiction lays the foundation for deeper empathy. We need to see ourselves in stories. We need to see people who are different from ourselves, too.
It comes as no surprise that the Trump administration and conservative outlets across the country have jumped onto the bandwagon of book-banning crusades. When higher education is being devalued by an aspiring dictator, knowledge is power. When engaging with the news of daily injustice can “burn out” our ability to connect with others, empathy is radical.
Banning books with queer narratives, racial commentary and feminist themes is dangerous. In the 2024-2025 academic year alone, PEN America reported a whopping 6,870 book bans across the country. Among the books most frequently banned, we can find “A Clockwork Orange,” which tells the near-future dystopian story of a teenage boy as an allegory for the way boys are socialized into violence, and “Nineteen Minutes,” which gives a fictional account of a school shooting.
It is no secret that authoritarian regimes often begin with an attack on the knowledge citizens can find in literature. We must fight these bans and ensure that adults, students and children have free access to the stories of others. Libraries, often referred to as “the last free space,” are critical. These spaces are accessible gateways to fiction, and ultimately, the empathy that engaging with fiction can foster. We must not let book bans in schools and libraries alike infringe on our constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression.
Fiction teaches us how to consider the lives of others and to see our own spilled onto the page. Getting to see the world from the perspective of characters and settings both similar and different from my reality has given me the tools I need to be an informed citizen. Had I not had access through my school library to “Wonder” or the other host of fictional novels that shaped my adolescence, I would have grown up to become a fraction of the person I am now.
Support your local library. Read, and read often. Being well-read, well-informed and empathetic are tools we all must learn to wield.
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