Stories and Empathy
“Sweat,” by Zora Neale Hurston, is one of my favorite short stories. The eye dialogue, while difficult at first to read, really pulled me into the story and made me feel like I was standing right there with Delia. Its religious allusions resonated with my East Texas roots, and I cheered Delia on as she stood outside the cabin and let the snake do what the snake does best to the man who beat her, demeaned her, and lived off her like a leech. “Sweat” inspired me to move on to some of Hurston’s other works, such as Their Eyes Were Watching God.
A great story can be a conduit to greater understanding between people from all cultures. Through Hurston’s pen, I can feel just a smidgen of what it was like to be a Black woman in Florida in the 1920s. This understanding widens both my knowledge and my empathy.
I’m not alone in this phenomenon. Multiple studies have shown that readers of fiction develop more empathy than those who do not read fiction. For me, I think the act of reading allows me to sort of walk in someone else’s shoes and experience life through their eyes. It exposes me to life scenarios that I will never experience.
Through reading, I’ve had the chance to get to know people from all walks of life, in realistic and fantasy settings. I’ve experienced for myself that
Words on a page can introduce us to what it’s like to lose a child, be swept up in a war, be born into poverty, or leave home and immigrate to a new country. And taken together, this can influence how we relate to others in the real world (Schmidt)
This is why the words in literature matter, and it is why your words matter, too. Your own shared stories, taken together with mine, can help us learn to appreciate and celebrate our differences and similarities with love, not condemnation.
