Here Is What I Mean by Reading to Learn

Have I made enough noise about how we need to explore what we read so we can learn about ourselves? Just to be sure I will suggest reading Cynthia Cruz's Searching For Myself in Working Class Art. 

Most the books I came across seemed drab to me: boring replications of the middle-class world I saw everywhere I looked; stories in which the protagonist experiences one succinct challenge, overcomes it, and becomes a “better” person for it. These films and books, optimistic and moralistic, ended, usually, in a transformation that left the protagonist happier. My encounters with such works left me feeling alienated. The worlds depicted in these works had no resemblance to the world I knew. Where were the stories of people who worked low-paying jobs and were unable or unwilling to participate in the neoliberal world? In stark contrast, when I came across books depicting the concrete lives of the working class and poor, I saw myself mirrored back in them.

In junior high school, I encountered the German book Christiane F. The book tells the story of a teenage girl living in a high-rise housing project in West Berlin. Alone most afternoons, Christiane seeks an escape from the sorrow and depression she experiences in her day-to-day life. Through a series of encounters, she is introduced to the music of David Bowie and then to heroin, eventually being forced to prostitute herself as a way to pay for her addiction.

I did not see my world when I was a teenager reading Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift or Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises or F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or even Kurt Vonnegut Jr's Slaughterhouse Five. Frankly, I am not sure I saw a place or people similar to the people I grew up with until I read Philip Roth's Newark novels or John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom novels, and both of those are stretches in certain ways.

Ms. Cruz writes:

....Over the years, though my interests have changed, I am always drawn to writing by working-class writers about the working class. Here, then, are my top five works of prose in that same category.

More books for me to read and maybe also for you? Check out her reviews.