Prejudice and Reading
I generally consider myself a pretty open-minded person. I like to think of myself as tolerant and accepting. I hate it when I realize that I'm not as tolerant or as accepting as I wish I was.
I recently downloaded an audio book from the library (I totally love doing this, by the way, it so so cool that I can hit a couple of buttons and have an entire book loaded onto my iPod without ever leaving my house although I really worry about copyright infringement and pirating, but that's a blog of a whole 'nother color). I hadn't heard of the author, but the premise of the book sounded interesting and since it was from the library, it was pretty much a no risk proposition.
I started listening to the book and it was terrific. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's darn good. I started wondering if this was the author's first book since she was so terrific and I hadn't heard of her. I went online. Nope. She had dozens of books. I did a little more investigating. She's published by Zondervan, an Evangelical publisher of Christian books.
This kind of froze me in my tracks. I realized that if I'd known that this was an Inspirational novel (I believe that's the classification that RWA would use), I wouldn't have picked it up. I'm not Christian. I assumed that the issues being dealt with in an Inspirational novel, or at least the ways in which those issues would be dealt, wouldn't speak to me.
Boy, was I wrong and, boy, do I feel like a great big bigot. But can I just say, "Yay, reading!" Because as embarrassed as I am about being a bigot, I'm super excited about the idea that reading can break down those kinds of prejudices just by telling a great story that opens someone's eyes.
What about you? Have you stumbled across any prejudices that you didn't know you had? Has reading opened your eyes to someone else's world?
I recently downloaded an audio book from the library (I totally love doing this, by the way, it so so cool that I can hit a couple of buttons and have an entire book loaded onto my iPod without ever leaving my house although I really worry about copyright infringement and pirating, but that's a blog of a whole 'nother color). I hadn't heard of the author, but the premise of the book sounded interesting and since it was from the library, it was pretty much a no risk proposition.
I started listening to the book and it was terrific. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's darn good. I started wondering if this was the author's first book since she was so terrific and I hadn't heard of her. I went online. Nope. She had dozens of books. I did a little more investigating. She's published by Zondervan, an Evangelical publisher of Christian books.
This kind of froze me in my tracks. I realized that if I'd known that this was an Inspirational novel (I believe that's the classification that RWA would use), I wouldn't have picked it up. I'm not Christian. I assumed that the issues being dealt with in an Inspirational novel, or at least the ways in which those issues would be dealt, wouldn't speak to me.
Boy, was I wrong and, boy, do I feel like a great big bigot. But can I just say, "Yay, reading!" Because as embarrassed as I am about being a bigot, I'm super excited about the idea that reading can break down those kinds of prejudices just by telling a great story that opens someone's eyes.
What about you? Have you stumbled across any prejudices that you didn't know you had? Has reading opened your eyes to someone else's world?
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