For me, it was a book called ‘The Outsiders’ by S.E Hinton. It is known as a literary classic these days, but it was quite hard hitting when it was released back in the 1960s.
In a nut shell; It is about a group of semi-impoverished greaser friends growing up in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, and all the life challenges they face, and how they react to prejudice against them whilst coping with family issues.
It was the first book that made me realise that some people in society don’t get it easy growing up, and I discovered what it meant to live on the ‘wrong side of town’ and what societal prejudice was. The outsiders was the first novel I read that brought up hard subjects like; domestic violence, alcoholism, street gang violence etc.
It was the first book to shatter my naive way of thinking about the world, at 13 years old! It is still one of my favourite stories to this day, and for all its slightly dark themes, I love the compassionate friendship and brotherhood that is displayed in this book!
“Heart of Darkness” by Josef Conrad was a big one for me as a black teen. All my life, I’d seen racism as this dumb, useless thing people held onto along with other dumb, useless things. But after reading through the grove of death, I understood where racial prejudice had gained its inertia from; fear. Specifically, fear of the self. Racism was necessary to allow slave owners and abusers to rationalize their deeds. It let them sleep at night.
Theres also everything else that that book talks about; addressing the horror of ambition, and describing how obsession emerges from it. There are no “great men”. We all die the same. Killer read, recommend it to anyone and everyone.
“Fear of the self” takes us back to that Biblical core idea that humans are born basically bad. We all carry around depravation and violence inside of us. And if we can see others as bad too, it helps us feel comparatively better. It works short term at least, but doesn’t address the core issue of having “terrible” thoughts and feelings.
thanks for sharing.
its sometimes hard to revisit great texts from my early years or expand my reading of authors i had previously sampled because of the uncertainty around the topics being taboo or racist.
it is like choosing a book becomes some complex problem to solve. i dont want to be stuck in the past or with past ideas. i want to read and know what the past ideas were, but if you skimmed the names of conrad’s books and the topics he addressed, it could easily be misconstrued by the large amount of people unfamiliar with the work. likewise there are plenty of writers that covered sensitive subjects, but then they personally made missteps in public to be labeled in a different way, then all their work has to be revisited and requisitioned.
i guess it just kind of sucks that i have to let perceptions of books and authors and fans guide what i read… instead of using the book to make my own interpretations.
i liked heart of darkness as a kid but i didnt get it. i love apocalypse now. its one of my favs. watched it more and more the older i got. that reignited my reading and understanding of conrad.