Why is Literature So Important?

One of the questions people always ask me the most is why I read so much. The question always makes me wonder because, to me, the answer is simple. I love learning and I fully believe we can learn so much from reading fiction. I also firmly believe that books can (and do!) change the world. It’s a bit of a grand claim, but cultural movements have always been at the forefront of all social change. Art has always been an integral part of any movement, if not the quintessential core of them, and literature is the art form that inspires me the most.

People often mistake progress as being made in legislatures and in the oval office because that’s the story the powers that be love to tell. But real change happens with us first. It happens when we come together and create something beautiful because art gives us a medium to connect with people beyond simple words, directly into our souls. Because when we truly connect with each other we can move mountains and we will always win. Because we create culture.

And because we create culture we also create cultural change and cultural movements. And when cultural movements are so pronounced and so encompassing, legislatures and the oval offices are forced to follow suit. Because we forced them to, not the other way around.

Despite how integral art and literature can be to our movements, so many of us lost our love for reading along the way. Especially after enduring an education system that seems to beat our love for reading our of us. Today we’re going to chat about just why literature is so important. And especially how important it is to read diverse literature, so hopefully you can answer the question, “why is literature so important?”

Why do we study literature?

I’ve been researching the benefits of reading books and I’ve been severely let down by the articles that I’ve read. Most boast about improving your vocabulary, better communication, stress relief, improved focus, improve your memory, etc. These are all incredible benefits of reading but, honestly, they are only scratching the surface. Reading books can do so much more than that. Let’s talk about it.

So, Why is Literature So Important?

Reading is important because it helps you grow your vocabulary. But what does that mean? What are you actually learning by learning that vocabulary? What kind of language are we absorbing? It’s absolutely crucial to remember just how powerful language is. Language is political. It is and it always has been. You can see it when you read legacy media headline in passive voice about a police violence, somehow “a bullet struck” the civilian rather than the civilian “was shot” or “killed” by the officer. We see it when Occupying Israel opens fire on Palestinians waiting for a bag of flour and the media calls it a “chaotic scene” instead of a massacre. It’s only a slight change in language but it delivers a massively different connotation. The words we choose have consequences just as much as the words that we exclude have consequences.

Language is always changing. We change it to keep people safe, to learn about ourselves, but most importantly language evolves and changes to suit the speaker or writer. So what happens when we only read books (or consume media) produced by people of a similar background? We start to narrow our view of the world. We start to see the world from that point of view. We start to see our own world in a way that suits the speaker or writer, oftentimes at the direct cost of ourselves.

Who Benefits From This?

I think we all know what happens when we all start to view our own world in a way that suits the speaker/writer. We start to see from their perspective, we empathize with them the most, even over ourselves, our families, our communities. We start to view other people in the way that they view other people. What’s worse is that we start to feel like those stories are more worthy than our own, that stories told from that perspective are more important than ours. Our stories are who we are and when we start to believe that our stories aren’t valuable enough to be told, we start to think that we are not valuable.

It’s no wonder why we hold certain “classics” in such high regard. I often hear people say things akin to, “no one will ever write as beautifully as Charles Dickens” but what is that saying about our progress? About our growth as a society? What are we clinging onto? We have advanced in technology far beyond what Charles Dickens saw in his day, but somehow literature has been on the decline? Or maybe there is strategy in holding these books up on a pedestal. Maybe that’s why literature is so important to the powers that be.

The good news is that this works both ways. We don’t have to live in a world where every story is told by people with the same background. It’s entirely possible for us to stop viewing literature through this narrow lens. And we can do it by simply being intentional with the books that we choose to consume. We do it by prioritizing stories written by people of the global majority.

I asked a brilliant friend of mine, Kat, why we study literature and she said, “nothing exposes a history, an ideology, and a person so much as the words they choose” and I think that sums it up perfectly.

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The Actual Benefits of Reading Books

Framing the importance of literature through that lens really starts to show us how influential literature can be. After all, literature is art, art is culture, and culture precedes legislation. If we all start to view our world through a specific lens, we start to forget about community and certain people’s stories. We start to view their stories as less important. And when we do that, it becomes exceedingly simple to convince us that we are, in fact, so vastly different from one another, when we’re not. But how could we remember if we only hear the stories of one specific people?

So what if, instead, we started reading stories produced by people with a wide range of backgrounds? What if we start amplifying different voices? What if we start being conscious of the media that we consume and start intentionally choosing to read diverse books? We would seriously start to see the world change.

We would stop seeing the world through that one, very narrow viewpoint. We would start learning the language of community. We’d hear the ways that other communities are hurt in ways that we had never even considered. We start to forget the language that has narrowed our perspectives, we start to forget the language that has been hurtful to so many. After all, in a community, harm to some is harm to us all. So let’s go back to why literature is so important.

Diversity in Literature

Anyone who knows the mission of Bookish Brews probably saw this coming. If you didn’t, I highly recommend checking out the books on this site. I do all diverse books, all the time! For exactly this reason! You can find monthly diverse new book releases or discussions on literature and more like this discussion on dark academia (a great next stop for you after this essay).

Diversity in literature is immensely important. Diversity in literature is the answer. We just talked about why it’s important to read diverse books. We even talked about why it has always been important to some people to support those books with a narrow viewpoint (well, it was implied). Because we learn to broaden our world view and learn from the experience of others. Especially the experiences of people unlike us. Because when we start to do that, we start to remember that they are more like us than we thought.

We’ve been seeing a lot of diversity in literature lately (barely) but it’s far from enough. And it’s only a lot relative to what was being published 10-20+ years ago. More books are being published today than there ever have been before. We have a real opportunity not only to read more diverse books to help train your brain but also to push for more diversity in publishing so that we can help more and more people’s voices be heard. I truly believe diversity in literature has the power to change the world.

If you question whether diversity in literature really makes a difference, I challenge you to instead question, “if diversity in literature weren’t so powerful, why was it so important to keep certain voices out for so long?”

What Can I Do?

I want to close out with an even more important question. What can we all do to move in the right direction? How do we continue to push for diversity in literature? So that we have the ability to learn from other people’s experiences? Well, I have a few suggestions:

Read books written by people with different backgrounds than you
Buy books by authors from marginalized groups
Question your teachers on why your syllabus is mostly white, able-bodied, neurotypical, etc
- Advocate for discussion of the implications of a syllabus like this
Write letters to your libraries about how much you appreciate the diversity in their selections
- Check out these books from your libraries (circulation numbers matter)
Pay attention to book bans (they are happening, don’t stay quiet)
Leave reviews for diverse books (even something as much as “loved this” helps!)

There are honestly so many more things you could do to help move us in the right direction. Not everyone can contribute to the same level and that is okay! The best thing that you can do is start being intentional about the content that you are allowing into your mind. Be constantly aware that you are learning from every input and think about what kinds of things you want to learn.

If you’re looking for even more things to do, Tor has a wonderful piece about how we can help with book bans: Book Bans Affect Everybody — Here’s How You Can Help. It’s a wonderful article full of useful information!

Supporting Diverse Authors

This last piece is so big that I think it deserves its own point. Supporting authors is huge. Authors will always need your support. Shout about their books, follow them and cheer them on via social media, tell your friends how amazing they are, read books because the author seems cool!

Authors writing diverse books are literally the ones doing the groundwork in changing the world in the way that we’ve talked about today. They are writing themselves into the narratives and therefore writing their communities into the narrative. They deserve your support and love!

A quick note to any writers reading this, what you do is so important. I fully believe you are making a change. Keep going. You can do it!

Book Recommendations

If you’re looking to start your journey into reading more diverse books, my aim is to make this website a helpful resource for you. Every book mentioned on Bookish Brews is written by an author who identifies with a marginalized community. If you’re looking for a space to start, head on over to our Featured Bookshelf: Diverse New Book Releases. Our Featured Shelf changes monthly based on the best new and diverse book releases from the previous month. Or you can check out one of our book lists:

There’s something there from a variety of genres, so pick your favorite and dive in!a

Bookish Brews

Why is Literature So Important?

Why do we study literature?