Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

Books know no limits or borders, they create longings and unexpected passions, they pose more questions than answers. They represent the unruly world, filled with contradictions and complications, a world that threatens the totalitarian mindset by being beyond its control.

To be a victim is to abdicate responsibility, to in effect give up most of all on yourself.

...it is not true that we all want the freedom of knowledge, because it comes at a high price. It comes with pain and loneliness; it demands commitment and responsibility.

In democratic societies, we do not normally resort to physical violence to muffle those with ideas, but we do use other forms of violence: prejudice, censorship, and slander.

the hostility of tyrants to imagination and ideas—is as relevant as ever.

Right now books are in danger. One can go a step further and say that imagination and ideas are in danger, and whenever they are threatened, we know that our reality is similarly in danger.

am reminded of James Baldwin’s claim that “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

This is a good time to remember what Toni Morrison once said: “. . . art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be.

Because change is difficult to effect, and differences often seem insurmountable, and literature teaches us how we are compelled to act in certain ways, leading us to the question “How do we change the world?” followed by “How do we change ourselves?

Fiction arouses our curiosity, and it is this curiosity, this restlessness, this desire to know that makes both writing and reading so dangerous.

I am reminded of James Baldwin’s claim that “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

state? Such systems may seem to appear out of nowhere, like a bolt of lightning. But really, this is because many choose not to see the warning signs, even when they become all too obvious.

In a 1970 letter to Angela Davis, Baldwin claims, “The American triumph in which the American tragedy has always been implicit—was to make black people despise themselves.

How could any republic survive, I asked, without the two human faculties that work through imagination: curiosity and empathy?

Toni Morrison once said: “. . . art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be.

It should be clear by now that when I talk about books, I am not talking about literature of resistance but literature as resistance. I am interested in ways through which literature and art resist seats of power—not only that of kings and tyrants, but the tyrant within us as well. It is possible to change policies, but it is far more difficult to change attitudes.

In the United States, it is mainly we, the people, who are the problem; we who take the existence of challenging literature for granted, or see reading as solely a comfort, seeking out only texts that confirm our presuppositions and prejudices.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

...my worry is that this polarization, along with more and more dependance on virtual reality, prevents us from connecting with other human beings and with the real world. This lack of connection dehumanizes not just others but also ourselves.

When we stop reading, we pave the way toward book burning; when we stop caring, we make way for someone else to take over control; when we prefer personality to character, and reality show or virtual reality to reality itself, then we get the kind of politicians that we deserve.

When we stop thinking, we stop caring.

Poetry was a way to combat the staid and formulaic language of politicians that opposed the flexible and dynamic language of poets and writers.

It should be clear by now that when I talk about books, I'm not talking about literature of resistance but literature as resistance.

We need the poet to constantly question things as they are, to jolt us out of our comfort zones, to make us look at the world through the eyes of others and seek to understand experiences that are not our own.

What choice does the king have but to kick the poets and storytellers out of his republic? And what choice does the poet have but to destabilize the philosopher king’s power by speaking the truth?

We in this country have lost the art of engaging with the opposition.

The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you anyway.

This era is overwhelmed by violence both in rhetoric and reality, communicating not through inclusion but elimination.