Why am I a reader?

I used to hate reading. In high school I never even finish a book. And I was proud of it; I bragged to my friends how I received A’s on all of my book reviews without even picking up a novel. I justified my A’s because I need to be somewhat clever to convince my English teachers that I knew something about a book I knew nothing about. I got A’s for cunning, not reading. During my mission, however, I began to read. I first read because I had to. But as time went on, I began staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning reading a book I wanted to read (they were never books on the “approved” missionary library but they were gospel related, none the less). Perhaps because reading is one of the few forms of entertainment a missionary is allowed to enjoy, I began to learn to love reading. When I got home, I started reading business books and books that taught me how to grow wealth. However, and thank goodness, these types of books no longer help my interest. I couldn’t view the world simply through dollars and cents. University introduced me to fiction and philosophy. Now, I love reading. I read because it helps me develop empathy, the emotional quality that I believe binds human beings together. When I pick up a book, if for but a moment, I can step outside of my own experiences and my own paradigms, and read the world through another’s experiences and paradigms. Even when I read about a Muslim woman in Tehran, I find myself in her and her in me. Reading allows me to connect with people.

Looking back at my high school experiences, I think I was a victim of readicide. My English teachers—or, more accurately, government curriculum and high-stakes standardized testing—killed my desire to read. I was forced to read, or at least the sparknotes of, the classics: Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and The Great Gatsby. Although they are great works of literature that I have come to love, I wasn’t interested in them when I was in high school. Because I had to work my way through difficult, tedious texts of what I thought was irreverent works of fiction, I gave up early on reading altogether. I think that if my teacher encouraged me to read what I was interested in, alongside the classics, I think I could have discovered the power and magic of literature much younger.