After my paternal grandmother died in 1991, her remaining goods were sold at an estate auction. For various reasons, my family and I arrived after the auction had started. I saw a box of books being sold as I approached the auction line and quickly grabbed my mother's number so I could bid on it. I didn't know exactly what was in the box, however, and let it go to a higher bidder. Later, I discovered my grandparents' copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin was included. It's a book I read from their shelves and would have loved to add to my collection. Like my grandparents, the author Harriet Beecher Stowe was a Quaker, which might explain the presence of that title in their modest library.
It is reported that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he fondly commented that she was "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." It has some problematic areas by today's standards, but brought the plight of slaves into the consciousness of its readers in the years leading up to the Civil War.
According to Wikipedia, the report on Lincoln may be anecdotal, perhaps created "to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change."
I don't know what, if anything, Lincoln said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, but I know reading Uncle Tom's Cabin at my grandparents house changed me, as it had so many people before me. Like many other books, it shifted my viewpoint by allowing me to get inside the head of someone not like me and see the world through their eyes. Movies and other dramatic presentations can also do that, but books are my preferred transportation for such experiences.
One of the things I notice when people express negative opinions about Blacks, Muslims, immigrants, women choosing to end a pregnancy, people living in poverty, addicted to various substances, or of varying gender and sexual identities is the lack of empathy involved. They have never walked even a few feet in the moccasins of those "others," let alone a mile, and it shows. They have easy solutions for the problems others struggle to overcome. They make a negative assessment of the motives and values of people they have never met. It's frustrating to me, but I'm never sure how to respond when someone puts negative labels on people not like them.
What I wish I could do is give such people some reading material that would allow them to see the world from a different point of view. One of the most profound examples of that for me was the first book I read by author Jodi Picoult, Picture Perfect. I had often wondered why an abused wife/girlfriend would stick around after it became obvious her abuser would never change. When I found myself thinking maybe the protagonist in Picoult's novel should give her abusive husband one more chance rather than leaving him, I was astounded. What was I thinking?! No! She needed to leave! This was never going to get better! And yet, he was so very charming and kind in between his fits of rage. And so remorseful about them.
What a powerful story! It changed me. I finally understood some of the dynamics driving such situations.
In the past year or so, I have been reading books that allow me to catch glimpses of the Black experience in America. I created a new ‘shelf’ for my Goodreads a few weeks ago called "racial-awareness." After a quick review of the 78 books I read in 2020, seven went on the new shelf. I'm currently reading two more. A significant portion of the Twitter accounts I follow are those of African Americans. I need to hear their voices and allow their stories to change me.
I live in an area where we can generally identify by name the few local residents who don't classify themselves as white. There's comfort in homogeneity. There's also discomfort in it. Why are we in a place with so little diversity? One of the things I notice is that when I do interact with African Americans I struggle to understand their speech. It makes me feel so very "white" and out of touch with my world. I need to be intentional about exposing myself to such speech patterns more often. The internet offers opportunities, I need to take them.
What a privilege it is to be offered an opportunity to see the world through the eyes of people not like us and hear their voices. Whether through fiction or memoirs or Twitter accounts or podcasts or movies or whatever means we find, I hope we can value such opportunities and let those viewpoints change us into more empathetic people.
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