Books in My Watering Can

Before I had books, I had my mother. Whenever I did something unkind she’d take my hand and ask in earnest,“How would you feel if someone did that to you?” She planted the seeds of empathy. Books have since been the water that’s made them grow.

There is no writer who better employs and invites empathy than James Baldwin. When I first read Notes of a Native Son, I was 17 and in a school that was entirely white save for three Black students. I'd experienced little of the world. His collection of essays tells the story of his inner and outer life with such eloquence and force, however, that the world cracked wide open before me even though I'd never left my desk.

Sure, I had liberal parents and read “the classics” that interrogated race in America, like To Kill a Mockingbird. But while Lee’s work highlighted the destructive nature of racism, it was also a story told from the perspecitve of a privileged white girl where the Black characters seemed more plot device than human. Notes of a Native Son was different.

I can never know what it's like to be Black in America, but Baldwin's unflinchingly honest invitation into his mind creates a level of intimacy with the reader that makes it impossible to distrust the sincerity of his account and makes plain how the universal human condition binds us all, even with people you once considered "other". I'd argue that while any good book offers the chance to explore someone else's world, Baldwin's both achieves and transcends this - it makes you better understand your own.

I've since read Baldwin's other work and revisit his pieces often. In the current politcal moment, it's a foregone conclusion that I look to it again now. In re-reading Notes of a Native Son, I've realized that Baldwin not only cultivates empathy, but calls for a nuanced conception of it. He demonstrates that empathy does not equate to pity nor serve as tacit approval. For white Americans to understand the Black experience, pity implies a position of power. True empathy, however, relies on a rejection of the outside circumstances that divide us to see each other as equally human. For liberals to empathize with conservatives, we must recognize the way in which fear and pain can drive a person to act in irrational and dangerous ways. This recognition, however, doesn't mean those actions should be excused. Rather, it provides insight in how to effectively appeal to the actors to change the way they see the world.

Baldwin said, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." Reading has taught me that we are naturally allied by our shared human experience. We should be wary of anything that leads us astray from this truth. So with each new book, my garden of understanding grows. I’ll tend it until winter falls and pray it keeps blooming long after I am gone.