a world unread

perching lines, no. 15

Hello gentle-people,

Today I am watching the falling snow and its stilling calm. There are parts of me that want to be moving—on and forward—but I am stalled by my need to slow down and let healing happen. Week 4 of my recovery starts tomorrow. On this stilling and snowy day, I am touching the wound that is becoming a scar, amazed—they really did cut me open.

Somehow, I am mending, and time has not been suspended. The world around me is shifting constantly and I have picked up my books and put them down. I brought more books with me into this recovery than I am allowed to carry all at once—because of my surgery, I am prohibited from carrying more than 10lbs. Their unread pages can feel both haunting and hopeful. They lay beside me in my borrowed bed as reminders of the weight I carry and the way I carry myself.

“Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world.”

—Paulo Freire

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🐦‍⬛ about perching lines

A “perch” is a light rest. Much needed in a world where many of us have to learn how to catch a break while standing up. In these lighter posts, I will offer poems, questions, and connections for those brief moments of reprieve. [Explore more in this series.]

I am often living in a world of unread books—somewhere around 326 to be exact. Yes, I counted—to make myself accountable. I decided this year that I will try my best not to spend money on books but to read the ones I have collected over the years. I started using StoryGraph to keep track of the books I’ve started but didn’t finish, and I plan to have my entire library cataloged in there.

While all this is true, I am not getting much reading done during this recovery time. There is but one book I am pushing myself to read because I am on a deadline, but I am barely moving through it at the rate of a quarter of a chapter a day.

Perhaps I am too hard on myself? No, I am definitely too hard on myself.

---

On Purpose by Rose J. Percy

You learned the difference
Between “by accident” and “on purpose”
Because you chose the wrong one and got in trouble. 

You wonder why José and Rose don't rhyme
And you wonder if José and the other boys laugh at you
And if every laugh is about you.

You struggle with “Sh” and “Ch”
And “Q” and “K.”
When you learn, you learn quickly mistakes will not be tolerated.
Your teacher, the one who only yells, tells your dad you'll never learn English. 
Your dad comes to school to be your comfort and translator. 
You make it fun and decide that day is a special occasion:
          meaning no uniform. 

You speak English confidently at home. 
Younger brothers in tow, writing swear words on the walls while playing school. 
You get in trouble again:
And that is how you learn about swear words. 
Your parents are convinced that “freak” is one of them 
And they tell you being bored is a sin. 
So you read a lot making sure you're always busy. 

Your family moves from New York to Rhode Island
And for once, you do not have to wear a uniform 
but you are introduced to the burden of choosing every day. 
So you wear a uniform and hope to introduce your new classmates to its comforts. 
Next time you are asked if you made a mistake, 
You will know the difference between “by accident” and “on purpose” and you will find one: purpose. 

You will write a beautiful essay in second grade that your parents make you read to all their guests. 
They are proud as you read and
You all celebrate carefully chosen American words 
In your home clothes.

I have worked so hard to be literate and still feel like it is a continued fight to grow in my literacy. Many people don’t know that English is my second language. Or that I was in ESL classes from kindergarten to second grade. Nor do they know that my kindergarten teacher read my silence as stupidity, telling my parents that I would never learn English. Yeah, that happened. I remember my father had to come to school with me to help translate. I remember feeling like I was lucky because I had a parent in class with me while other students didn’t.

Now, look at the girl who was told she would never speak, read, or write English — how is she doing now? She is reaching people in a language that first met her with hostility. She is using that language to write beautiful poetry. She is “reading the world”¹ with that language and hoping to help others do the same.

I have been hard on myself since I was learning the difference between “sh” and “ch.” When I return home, I will return to my 300+ unread books. But I will take them in one page at a time—one day, one week, one month, and one year at a time. Just as I did when I stepped into my first library, in a bookmobile in second grade and checked out The Little Mermaid.²

I may not finish them all. I may have to unload the books that I bought when I developed a niche interest in a subject I am no longer interested in. I may have to leave some for the next generation of readers in my family to inherit.

My hope is, that I can have a little grace with myself when I consider my shelves of unread books, I can have that same grace for how I am still becoming more literate in reading the world. I hope that we can all pace ourselves a little bit more as we confront a world of information that often feels disempowering as we scramble to figure out what we can actually do in response to it.³

maybe together

Maybe together, we could take the world one page at a time and resist the urge to shame ourselves for how much we haven’t read and how late we have shown up in our reading thus far. Maybe together we can cut each other some slack when we need to pause to digest the meatier parts of this book that is our world. Maybe we could read different sections that emphasize our strengths, and discuss them together so we can cover more ground.

Maybe together is the only way; maybe we need to see our call to read the world as a collective call meant to be held by us all. It’s not all on your shoulders. The weight isn’t meant to be carried by you alone. Let’s break it up—I’ll take 9 lbs.

Landing Tracks

1. What does it mean for you to “read the word and the world?” Reflect on your journey of literacy and see if you can name any pivotal moments that transformed how you see yourself in the world as a result of reading.

2. Guessimate or count them up: How many unread books do you have? How can you journey with those books in a way that honors the time you need to pace yourself as you read? How can you bring others along on the journey? Are there ways of looking at these unread books as future gifts instead of present burdens?

3. How do you confront “a world unread”? As you tend to your information diet, how do you stay mindful of what you consume? How do you share the weight of learning more about the world around you while assuming individual responsibility to be an agent of change?

1. This comes from Paulo Freire’s book Literacy: Reading the World and the World.

2. Which I remember because it was also the first book I lost and was fined for.

3. I read this described in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death as a problem of information not having as much “action value,” especially with regard to the news and the mediums its delivered to us with, which are increasingly fast (see Postman, 68-69).