...or rather, these books tackle tough issues.  That's the theme this week over at The Broke and the Bookish, the lovely bloggers who host Top Ten Tuesday.  I have a while theory of reading as social justice, and have been meaning to get back to building my Social Justice Books page here at Book Addict Reviews, so coming up with ten is a cakewalk.  I'll put the adult titles here, but if you ware interested in social justice-themed books for children, check out my post at Second Childhood Reviews.

1.  A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini:  I have a friend who has told me she is glad that I was around on 9-1 so I could explain who the Taliban were and what was happening in Afghanistan, since she had never heard of them.  I think that this book does the best job of describing what life was like under Taliban rule.

 

 2.  The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien:  I just read this book of short stories/vignettes from O'Brien's experience in the Viet Nam War, and I think that it has important things to say about war in general and what it does to the young people we send into it.

3.  The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood:  Patriarchal, tyrannical theocracy based on biological control of women anyone?  Oh, wait, that's right, we aren't that far away from that it some parts of our country, where a woman's right to choose is being eroded more and more every day.

4.  Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison:  Amazingly powerful book about child sexual abuse and domestic violence.  And on a related note...

5.  The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison:  All of the above, only adding racial identity and racism to the mix.

6.  Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean:  When horrible people do horrible things it is in our nature to dehumanize them and turn them into monsters who deserve death.  What Sr. Prejean's work does is remind the readers vividly that people on death row are as human as you or me, and that if we as a society want to continue executing them, we need to do it with an understanding of our shared humanity.

7.  Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg:  This roman a clef details Feinberg's life as a butch lesbian in New York in the years directly before and after the Stonewall Riot in 1969.  Feinberg has since identified as transgendered, and wrote another book about the historical treatment of transgendered people called Transgender Warriors that is really fascinating.

8.  Zeitoun, Dave Eggers:  This true story details what happened to an Islamic immigrant named Zeitoun and his family in the days after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  Zeitoun stayed in New Orleans, and after the storm spent his days rowing around his neighborhood rescuing people and feeding pets left-behind-that is, until the US army arrested him as a terrorist...

 

9.  And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts:  Shilts' book recounts the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and how homophobia and bigotry kept doctors and scientists from recognizing, researching, and treating the disease more quickly and efficiently.

 10.  The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perotta:  Perotta gives us a thoughtful look at the abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex education debate.  But guess which one still leads to fewer unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases?  Knowledge is power, people!

Be an Armchair Activitst

In 2001, the world turned its attention to Afghanistan.  In the wake of 9-11, everyone suddenly wanted to know more about this small country in Asia where Osama Bin Laden had planned and orchestrated the attack on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon.  All of a sudden the media was full of experts who wanted to explain the Taliban to us, explain what dangerous crazy extremists they were, and why we needed to go over there and take them out.

Here's the thing-some of us already knew about the Taliban.  Some of us had been urging the US government to intervene in Afghanistan for years.  The loudest voice came from the Feminist Majority Foundation, which educated people about the horrific conditions that existed for women under Taliban rule.  Because I found the FMF, I was able to explain to my confused, grief-stricken friends exactly who it was that had let Bin Laden find a safe haven.

There is a whole 'nother post in the question of why the US did nothing to help the women in Afghanistan until aafter 9-11, but the question I want to pose is whether things in Afghanistan would have happened the way they did if A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini had been published in the 1990s instead of after 9-11. If more people had known about the conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan, would more have been done to remove the Taliban before Bin Laden moved in?  I realize this is a fairly simplistic view of geopolitics, but as someone who believes in the power of reading to create understanding across cultures, I have to believe that increased knowledge of world issues would somehow lead to different results.

Teachers will tell you that reading opens doors in your imagination, that by reading you can explore new worlds and escape to exotic places.  And that is certainly true.  But there are authors who are out there writing truth to power, authors who have written works that hold up injustice and demand us to look, not to turn our heads.   And because reading is transactional, those of us who read those authors and those books can't help but be changed by the experience.

This may seem a fairly passive way to participate in social justice.  After all, there are people doing good works in our communities all the time, people who volunteer, who protest, who lobby, who take to the streets in an effort to make peace and justice a reality for all people.  But if you are like me, with a spouse, a child, a job, a mortgage, chances are that the best you can do is write that check to the charity of your choice.  While this is an important act, allowing people who can to do the work, it might leave you with a thin patina of guilt, a small voice in your heart telling you that there is more you can do.  It might seem like a gross over-rationalization, but I argue that by reading, you can do something to change the state of the world.

Obviously non-fiction seems like a good place to start when talking about books that can lead to social  change.  And to be sure there are plenty of thoughtful, passionately argued non-fiction books that can lead to greater insights about the issues of human rights and justice.  Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen is an example of non-fiction that is both informational and emotional.  But what about those of us that prefer fiction?  Well I say that sometimes, fiction is the best way to highlight social issues.  Fictional narratives on the scale of A Thousand Splendid Suns do more than tell us the facts and figures about oppression-they allow us for a period of time to live the lives of those affected by injustice.  They give us a cultural context for the what we see on the news.  And making connections with characters that lead such seemingly different lives can bring home to us just how similar the human experience is, regardless of place or time.

So, what should you be reading?  I've added a new page to the blog, where I've listed some recommendations of books that I have read or read enough about that I can attest to their worth.  If anyone has other titles, just put them in the comments.  All of the blurbs come from Goodreads or Amazon.  Some of them are difficult to read, some are joyful and uplifting, but all highlight issues affecting people somewhere in the world.  As that prolific author Anonymous said, "Nobody's free until everybody's free."