Using Books to Grow Your Empathy.

By Shamica Carey

As an avid reader, I’m a firm advocate that books are just one of the many keys that you can use to build your empathy.  Fictional books where the author creates a narrative so in depth that the reader literally leaves their own universe to enter another one can encourage the reader to think outside of themselves, enter into the minds of other characters, and try to understand circumstance, intersectional problems etc… 

The particular genre I recommend if this is your ultimate goal? Fantasy. Within a fantasy driven book where entire magic systems are created and problems you would never come across in your very real life occur, you get a strong sense of something completely other and new. However… You often also see strong similarities within your own universe, especially depending on the type of book you read. Every fantasy book that you pick up can tell you so much about how the author views the world, and by default how others like them do as well. How do they treat some of their characters? How do they describe them? Who are the villains and who are the heroes? 

In The Witcher, the protagonist is a white guy who goes around slaying monsters. He’s the quiet mysterious type who likes to show the world how ‘good’ and ‘cool’ he is, but internally, he’s only saving young girls under the age of 14 because he low key wants to take them to bed… He’s obsessed with naked women, and that’s the driving force for literally everything he does. I’m not saying that this is how every man in the 1800’s viewed the world at the time, but that description really does fit 80% of the men I’ve met in my life.

Another example would be Sarah J. Maas’ entire book series, A Court of Thorns and Roses. She took the trauma the Irish, the Welsh and the Scots gained from the horror the English inflicted on them and turned it into Faerie porn. Not only that, but she demonised the Irish, making them the enemies. She also minimised her black and brown characters and struggled to find a way to describe them that didn’t pertain to food…  Her take on trauma and mental health in general is very closed off, and often villainises characters who, in real life, you’d probably sympathise with a lot more.

My opinions on these books are quite clear here, but that’s my take on them as a black girl who grew up around a lot of people who often refuse to step outside of themselves and view the world in a different lens. These books are also really quite popular, and a lot of people who enjoy them see something in them that I didn’t, something that gave them escapism and joy. For some, they enjoyed A Court of Thorns and Roses because it allowed them to see a strong female main character, which is always a positive plus. And while The Witcher certainly has its faults, it also has a few main characters who a lot of female readers adore.

However, if, like me, these books aren’t really your thing, here are some other fantasises that takes you out of the majority ‘white gaze’:

In The Scholomancer series, the protagonist is half Indian. She learns about Indian history and culture (and through default so do we), and she touches on the different languages spoken in India, one of the ones she knows is Marathi, which she is fluent in. The author completely flipped the switch for her female mc in this book. She took the ‘women are always evil’ theme, and leaned into it, heavily, allowing us to see that only those who actually benefit from calling certain people ‘evil’ get away with it.

Legendborn, one of my ultimate top 5 books, is all about a young black girl trying to survive in a white world. Tracy Deonn, the author, takes her protagonist’s pain and uses it to make her the most powerful person amongst all of her racist white peers. The book itself touches on painful microaggressions in very smooth and clever ways, and the way others often turn away when they see blatant racism and sexism, leaving black women to fight for themselves.

We Hunt the Flame is written by an Arabic author with an incredibly cool and super intelligent main character who works hard to combat sexism. She also writes her male characters as complex and allows us to view them slowly allowing their guards to come down as they step out of the toxic male realm and work towards actually being human.

For obvious reasons, I love these books. They give everyone insight into the experiences of people so completely unlike them. These books touch on social politics and so much more.

So… if you want to strengthen your empathy, read fiction, but most of all, read fantasy.