So You Don't Love to Read
"[R]eading could be an act of the body, and it didn’t need to be all tied up in the mind."
I was never a reader. I have no stories of the library being my favorite place. I have no memory of losing myself in a book, though I could have used the escape. As the youngest of four children and the only girl in a working-class Mexican household, books were not part of my world. Between the demands of a working mom, emotionally distant father, and four ravenous children aged teens to grade-schoolers, yelling is what filled our home day and night. Yelling to get food on the table. Yelling to pick up messes. Yelling about money. Yelling about family. Yelling over the Atari console.
“¿Quien rompió la lámpara?” my father would yell. My three brothers and I remained silent to avoid what came after yelling.
“Why ask? None of them are going to say!” my mother would yell back. My eldest two teenage brothers were growing into their bodies and full of rage. Sometimes yelling would explode into shoving. Holes decorated the walls and doors as evidence.
Once a fight started while we were all in the car together returning from a family party. My father was drunk and driving. He accused his two teenage sons of being ungrateful. They railed against the accusation. My mom kept quiet. Back at the house the fighting became physical. My eldest brother ran off. My mom took the rest of us away from my father and into the night. We walked down the street and called an aunt from a payphone to pick us up. It felt devastatingly late, though it may not have even been midnight.
For those of us left—my mother, third eldest brother, and me—TV became our escape.
This was often what it was like when we were all together. Car rides for a family excursion would be abandoned halfway down the street from the house. The car would start turning before anyone could say, “Don’t make me turn this car around” and screech into the driveway. Doors yanked open for each family member to pour out in anger. As the youngest, I watched their movements and did my best not to complain or cry. Cries made me a target, and yet, I couldn’t stop myself from crying.
In the house, everyone did their best to stay clear of the rest. The teenagers escaped into girlfriends and cars. My dad escaped into projects in his garage becoming nothing but a light the size of a door in the dark. For those of us left—my mother, third eldest brother, and me—TV became our escape. With one in the family room, one in my parents’ bedroom, and one in the boys’ room, it became easy for the three of us to separate, shut down, and go numb. One of my favorite escapes was Full House. “TGIF” felt literal as I waited for the long week to end, so I could spy on a well-kept home with a white family and marvel at the mild tones the adults spoke in and how they got down on a knee to address the children. The children were all girls, chatty, and demanding. No episode went by without one of them complaining or crying, and yet, it was never a problem.
Sometimes I could escape to my cousin’s house, which wasn’t too dissimilar from Full House. For one, she had a white mom, and the house had an order that never existed at mine. The kitchen had an ivy leaf border across the top of the wall and ivy leaf accessories all around to match. They had a living room no one sat in with artifacts from Europe like a giant globe that’s top half opened to reveal a bar that no one drank from. In the family room, a big, white fur rug, reminiscent of a bear rug, laid across the floor. After a tidy dinner of chicken breast, baked potato, and broccoli with cheese sauce, we’d move into the living room to watch TV together.
My uncle loved Hunter. While the episode played, he and my aunt sat hand-in-hand at the loveseat. My cousin and I splayed across the bear rug. When TV time was done, she and I padded to her bedroom where a queen bed was decorated with an 80s splatter paint bedspread design in pinks and teal with matching pillows and throws. Climbing into bed, my cousin instructed me to pick a book from her nightstand. After TV time was reading time, and then bed. I picked up a fairytale anthology and flipped aimlessly through pages. I didn’t know what I was to do with it. I looked over to my cousin and found her eyes focused on the pages in front of her. She seemed to be enjoying herself.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m reading The Secret Garden.”
“Do you like it?”
“Want me to read it to you?”
“Sure!” And she did. And I curled up next to her like a cat to listen. After a while the books went down, the reading light switched off, and I fell asleep safe and satiated.
Advising people to read to become better writers is not the same as saying, if you don’t love to read, you shouldn’t be a writer.
In the introduction to Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, psychoanalyst and post-trauma specialist, Clarissa Pinkole Estés, Ph.D. writes, “Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act, anything—we need only listen.” I find Estés’ words comforting as a writer who has always struggled with reading.
Nearly every professional writer, and every writing teacher, will tell you the best way to improve your writing is to read. Read widely. Read often. Read what you love. Read what inspires you. Read.
Not so long ago, in the pre-Covid times, a well-known writer took to Twitter to pronounce a slightly different interpretation of this rule. They Tweeted something along the lines of, “If you don’t love to read, writing is not for you.” The declaration was met by a firestorm of clap backs. The writer was confused. How could reading be controversial? In their defense, they Tweeted again saying this was known and commonly accepted advice.
True, and not true.
Advising people to read to become better writers is not the same as saying, if you don’t love to read, you shouldn’t be a writer. Like me, young learners experience a variety of barriers to becoming proficient readers including, and not limited to, learning difficulties, English as a second language, growing up in a working class or immigrant household, a lack of access to books that speak to personal experience, past trauma, and struggles with mental health.
Not everyone is gifted with joyful introductions to books that allow for a love of reading to flourish. For some, reading is a mystery and for others a struggle, but this does not quelch a need for stories.
What if “reading” could look like many things? Listening, communing, watching, walking, dreaming, singing, dancing, acting, even napping, might also be reading. What might that mean for all the burgeoning storytellers waiting for permission to speak? Imagine how much more medicine the world could have.
Did she think I had cheated since she read it to me first? Did my reading not count?
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman was the first book I read on my own. My third-grade teacher, Ms. Herrera, read it in parts to us over a week. At the end of lunch each day, I’d rush to my desk thrilled to watch Ms. Herrera move to the corner of the blackboard where I knew the book waited to be re-opened.
“Can anyone tell me what’s happened in the story so far?” she’d ask, and I’d dart my hand up into the air to retell details from the day before. I had a crush on Ms. Herrera and her late 80s chocolate feathered hair. She wore lavender sweaters that hugged her soft body, and she never yelled or grew angry. My hand was often shot up in the air to catch her attention and bring her my way. “Wow, Xochitl! I love your enthusiasm,” she’d say, which made me beam. Reading hour was my favorite part of the day, and when she finished the last page of The Whipping Boy, I asked if I could take the book home.
Maybe I asked for the book to keep her beauty close even after I left the classroom.
I finished my reading so quickly that I impressed myself. I didn’t know I could read a whole book! Only a couple of days after borrowing the copy, I bound to Ms. Herrera’s desk, book in hand, to share my accomplishment.
“Ms. Herrera, I finished it! I read it all on my own!” But when she took the book back, she didn’t give her usual encouragement. I immediately shrunk in on myself. Did she think I had cheated since she read it to me first? Did my reading not count? Looking back this may have been my first experience with imposter syndrome.
Jennifer V. Fayard Ph.D. in the article, “Why Rewatching TV Shows Feels So Good,” published in Psychology Today states, “experiencing something previously increases something called perceptual fluency, or the ease with which we can process information, in subsequent experiences. When something is easy to process, it tends to make us feel positive emotions, which in turn make us like the object more.” In other words, by enjoying Ms. Herrera’s reading of The Whipping Boy, I was able to enjoy the book on my own. My love for Ms. Herrera transferred into positive feelings for reading. It’s no wonder that being read to is still one of my favorite acts of love.
Though we tend to think of reading as a solitary act, it can more often than not be communal.
By junior high, I started reading more, but only to gain points in the Book It! program and the chance to win a free personal-sized pizza. I would read a book for the thrill of being sent to the library to sit at the green-screened Macintosh and take a multiple-choice quiz. Each book test was worth a certain amount of points. The harder the book, the more points you could earn. Gone with the Wind was worth the most.
I made it to 75 points, which meant my name was called at assembly. The effort was worth the prize of walking up in front of the whole school to receive a blue bookmark that said, “Book It!” across the top. (I don’t think I ever made enough points for a pizza.)
In high school, I am proud to say, I completed at least one summer reading assignment. When I saw The Color Purple by Alice Walker on the list of books to choose from, I remembered having seen a copy of the VHS back home in our garage. My dad had a video rental shop back in the mid-eighties called “Classic Rentals.” That was the premise; they only had the classics. It was one of his many short-lived endeavors, which included a flower shop, burrito stand, and party balloon installations. Now in the 90s, his inventory of VHS tapes lived in stacked boxes in our garage growing dust alongside an old helium tank. On bored summer days, I rummaged through the boxes to see what I could find. This is how I came to watch A Chorus Line and how I got a copy of The Sound of Music.
I knew The Color Purple was in the inventory, so it seemed like the easiest choice. Plus, a copy of the book lived in my eldest brother’s small left-behind library from when he moved away to college. Spy Vs Spy, Calvin and Hobbes, 1984, Malcom X, and The Color Purple were all that remained from his absence. I took my dad’s tape and played the first couple of scenes. Next, I flipped open my brother’s book, and read just as far. Over days, I continued this process until both the movie and book were done. Knowing what was to happen helped me read, and it was like The Whipping Boy all over again.
Even though I still didn’t enjoy reading, English was my favorite class. Just as in grade school, in-class reading and book discussions were the best part of my day. Like I’d done so many times before, I enjoyed listening to others read as well as share their retellings of the plot and interpretations. When the teacher would ask, “What do you think the moor symbolizes?” I’d raise my hand, and, taking bits from all I heard, I’d talk about how the moor represented the unknown, the wild parts of her inner self the main character desired to explore, or some such thing as that.
“That’s great, Xochitl!” teachers would say. It wasn’t uncommon to earn an A on a test for a book I never read as long as I was present and participating.
One of the few books I remember reading for class was The Handmaid's Tale by Margarette Atwood. I read it because Ms. Johnson was the first feminist I ever met. One day in class she explained why her name was Ms. and not Mrs. even though she was married. She said, “Because I’m not missing anything, and I don’t belong to anyone but me.” She was a tall Irish American woman with big, curly red hair. She spoke to us like regular people, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. But even she couldn’t convince me to read Wuthering Heights.
Though we tend to think of reading as a solitary act, it can more often than not be communal. Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., argues that the art of the story “strengthens and arights the individual and the community.” The first stories were spoken and shared between the storyteller and the listener. And then they became performances as songs and dramas shared between performers and an audience. We as writers consider our reader as we write. There are relationships in reading, and maybe seeing reading as a communal act could be for the betterment of all.
Someone makes a declaration like, You have to love reading to be a writer, and suddenly you have a big, bad secret. You’re on borrowed time.
In college I majored in theater. Reading plays for class, I enjoyed that their structure meant less words on the page. Plays were faster to read, easier to understand, and could be read within a group with each reader taking on a role. Theory and criticism classes were again my favorites. I loved reading True West, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Wit, and Antigone. I loved talking about themes, symbols, structure, foil characters, and character motivation. I wrote a paper I was particularly proud of on True West and Sam Shepherd’s western motif portrayed through foil characters that represented good and bad. To this day, if I’m trying to write a particularly emotional scene, I bring in elements of the natural environment à la Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
In my voice class, I had an assignment to memorize a Shakespeare sonnet. My teacher, a little Italian woman who had bit parts in many primetime procedurals, taught me how to embody the words. She showed me how to find the places to breathe and how the sounds of the words Shakespeare chose could tell me how the speaker of the piece felt. The soft “ah” sound in the words awesome and heart was a sound of longing and drew out from the chest. The “r” in words like roar and rage connoted anger and planted in the core. She taught me that reading could be an act of the body, and it didn’t need to be all tied up in the mind. The revelation was thrilling!
But when I entered an MFA program at 27, I felt shamefully inadequate. Others in my cohort had Literature, Creative Writing, and Composition degrees. Others in my cohort had read Ulysses, As I Lay Dying, Dante’s Inferno, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby. As a poet I felt I was expected to know the complete works of Emily Dickson, Edward Hirsch, and other white poets, most of whom were men.
Someone makes a declaration like, You have to love reading to be a writer, and suddenly you have a big, bad secret. You’re on borrowed time. One day the reading police will discover you never finished 100 Years of Solitude, and your WRITER card will be revoked!
The first book of poetry I ever bought and read was Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day by Nikki Giovanni. I bought the book because the cute guy I was crushing on in my Acting II class recommended it to me. By then I was probably a college Junior and in my early 20s. What if there is a correlation between the people we love and what we read?
In 2020, the only book I could manage reading was Book of Delights by Ross Gay, a collection of flash essays, each one written about one day’s “delight.” It was the calming, quick read I needed, but even that I never finished. I did, on the other hand, rewatch all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls for the 4th time. And I’m not the only one. During the hardest days of Covid, many news sites noted a trend in rewatching favorite TV shows. In “Why Rewatching TV Shows Feels So Good,” a 2021 Psychology Today article, Jennifer V. Fayard Ph.D. noted that individuals were experiencing a heavier “cognitive load,” or amounts of stress. Traversing daily life in lockdowns created so much extra work for our brains that there wasn’t much room for new information, and old stories became a balm. Our current world is so chaotic, so filled with pain and violence, why add to it by constituting what reading should be.
For some of us reading is hard, and stress caused by a multitude of factors can make it harder. Sometimes it’s easier to listen to the audiobook, watch the movie, or even ask a friend what happens, and it’s not because we’re cheaters, but because it’s what our brains can handle. And isn’t honoring the needs of our minds and bodies part of the medicine Estés speaks of?
I want to ease your stress. I want to confess my dirty little writer-reader secrets, so you don’t have to. Is it helping? Secret telling is scary business, so let me gift you two final stories.
ONE
I was a senior at a Catholic high school. It was not uncommon for me to argue with my religion teacher about gay rights or abortion rights. I was known for speaking up in history class to ask where all the women were in the story.
“The book says 200 men made it to Oregon, but where are the women? I know those men didn’t travel alone,” I said one time.
“Not again,” grumbled a blond jock. The teacher-coach sighed through his mustache and continued on with his lesson as if I said nothing. I also liked to talk about immigrant rights and worker rights. I got a reputation. At least once I can remember being called, “brown power girl.”
But then one day at lunch, the newly renovated library had just opened, and I decided to take a look. The room was five times bigger than the previous school library, and there was a wall of windows where I could see my lunch crew sitting just on the other side laughing. I was tired of all the noise and remember thinking how clean and quiet the library felt. I went to the card catalog and sifted through the index cards. I found something of interest and walked through the stacks to find the book that matched the number in my hand. I stopped at a shelf and pulled the book out. The cover was black with the silhouette of four people in red each holding up a fist. In white the words read, CHICANO!
I sat cross-legged right in the middle of the aisle and read until a bell rang signaling the end of lunch. It was the first time I felt seen by a book.
TWO
I was in grad school and in my late 20s. Each month, I was tasked with reading three poetry books and writing an annotation (essentially a book report) for each along with 10 new pages of poetry. On days I had a hard time focusing, I drove to my grandmother’s house in Boyle Heights with the books.
One afternoon, I knocked on the door, and she let me in. Outside the ice cream truck could be heard playing its usual tin-y Twinkle Twinkle. The guy pushing a vending cart bellowed out, “Elooooooooooteeeeeeee.” But inside everything was still and in its place.
“¡Hola Grandma!” I gave her a hug. “Vengo a trabajar.”
“Bien. Bien,” she said. She knew I didn’t speak much Spanish, and I knew she didn’t speak any English. Through gestures, we sat down at the family room just beyond the front door. She sat on one couch, and I sat on the other. I took out a poetry book.
“Poemas.” I showed the book to her. She took out a prayer book. We read together silently in the afternoon light. Eventually, my eyes grew heavy, (it’s what always happens to me when I read), and my head dropped. She handed me a pillow and invited me to lay and rest.
When I woke from my nap, we moved into the kitchen so she could serve me dinner, and then I went home. It was the best reading I ever did.
So sure, being a writer means also being a reader. But does every writer have to love reading? Maybe it’s enough to love each other, listen to one another’s stories, and let the medicine do what the medicine does. I hope you find medicine in these pages.
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