I was backpacking through India when I picked up The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
Right from the start, the words electrified me: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear window panes and die, fatly baffled in the sun. The nights are clear, but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.”
It wasn’t just that Roy’s writing was lush and descriptive. (Though it is.) But at the very moment I dove into this novel, I was drifting on a wooden houseboat through the backwaters of Alappuzha, less than 30 miles away from the book’s setting. Reading it felt like someone had switched on a light, illuminating my surroundings. Page after page, this gorgeous novel gave me greater context about the place I was experiencing, offering far more insight than a traditional guidebook. I left the region with a level of awareness and an appreciation I might not have had otherwise.
But that’s what fiction can do anytime, anywhere. It has the capacity to transport us into another person’s mind, as well as inside their family and their community, giving the reader a way to experience a different world than the one they already know. Fiction can also tackle huge issues and uncomfortable topics, grappling with things like racism, homophobia, sexism, abuse, and other traumas while transcending the limits of our own perspective.
That was the impetus behind the Strong Sense of Place podcast. In every episode, hosts David Humphreys and Melissa Joulwan focus on a specific destination, often a country, discussing great books that showcase the location and help deepen understanding about that place.
“Part of the podcast project that was really attractive was the idea of shepherding empathy,” Humphreys tells Shondaland in a recent interview. “I believe we’re in a race between empathy and tribalism, and it could go either way.”
Even world leaders believe this is an area that deserves more attention. In a 2006 speech at Northwestern University, President Barack Obama said that while we often discuss the federal deficit, our focus should turn to another kind of shortfall as well: “I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through those who are different from us.”
Fiction has the capacity to transport us into another person’s mind, as well as inside their family and their community, giving the reader a way to experience a different world than the one they already know.
Why empathy matters
Empathy, understanding, and sharing in the feelings of others are not the same as sympathy, which is feeling sorry for someone. Stories play a key role in making that distinction. George Saunders, opining about empathy in The Guardian, said that reading reveals “the quality of our own mind” — how quickly it rushes to judgment, how it struggles to understand, and ultimately, how it reboots with new information.
“When we read a story, we are doing something that comes naturally to us, but under more amenable circumstances, with more time to reflect, than in real life,” he wrote.
That proved true in my experience as well. While travel broadened my perspective and showed me things I’d never seen before, it was the books I read that forced me to slow down and actively consider life through another lens.
You don’t have to leave home in order to do this, however. All you need is a book and a willingness to immerse yourself in it. For instance, since launching Strong Sense of Place in January 2020, both Humphreys and Joulwan said that reading beyond their favorite authors and genres has profoundly changed them and how they view the world.
“I once heard that some readers like to look in a mirror and see themselves back. And some readers like to look through a window,” Joulwan says. “To me, that means if you want to gain insight about others, you’re going to have to read books written by and about people who are not like yourself.”
Humphreys agrees, adding that reading globally has “made the world more interesting.”
He says, “We read novels because life is too short to get to know that many people that well. Sure, you might know your family and some friends to a certain extent. But it’s difficult to get to know people well, to really see through another person’s eyes, and novels really unlock that. And that’s a huge step forward in the empathy race.”
This matters because when we read a novel, we identify with the characters and learn from their struggles in the fictional space while using that to form greater connections within the real world. Stories model how to engage our emotions.
But in order to make an impact on readers, novels don’t always have to explore the past or stay rooted in the present. Fiction is also essential for looking toward the future.
How fiction changes us
The emerging interdisciplinary field of literary neuroscience is studying exactly that, looking at the many ways literature affects human cognition. One study, conducted at the University of Toronto, found a strong connection between reading fiction and better social skills. Another study asked participants to read an excerpt from Shaila Abdullah’s 2009 book Saffron Dreams, a story in which a Muslim woman is the victim of a hate crime, and found that afterward, the readers showed less negative bias toward people of different races and ethnicities.
Dr. Natalie Phillips, the founder and co-director of the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab at Michigan State University, is well known for her research on how literature affects the brain. During one study, she had volunteers read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park while inside a brain scanner. The test subjects were instructed when to skim the text casually and when to give it a close read.
The result: Their minds lit up. Phillips found there were “global activations” across diverse regions of the brain as the readers shifted between casual and close reading, requiring the coordination of multiple, complex cognitive functions. (So, when someone says a book changed the way they think, it’s not an exaggeration.)
But in order to make an impact on readers, novels don’t always have to explore the past or stay rooted in the present. Fiction is also essential for looking toward the future.
Dr. Julian Chambliss, a professor of English at Michigan State University and the Val Berryman curator of history at the MSU Museum, is an expert in Afrofuturism, which he defines as “the intersection of speculation and liberation.” It is inspired by the Black imagination, striving toward the freedom to see new paths and imagine different worlds. This refers to a wide-ranging swath of work, including music, film, comics, and other media. But within the context of literature, popular examples of Afrofuturism are Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson, the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy by Tomi Adeyemi, and the work of Octavia Butler.
“We often talk about the ways that novels and other fictional narratives can shed light on different perspectives and empower people to move through the experience of others,” Chambliss says. “And that is very real. Literature provides an opportunity for the reader to experience the experiences of others.”
He concludes, “But any kind of racial or social transformation is almost always tied to some kind of structural transformation, which is harder for people to wrap their head around. That’s what it can do too. Fiction looks at the structures that need to be changed to become more equitable and offers some pathways people might want to pursue to build a better world.”
Maggie Downs is a Palm Springs, California-based author and journalist focused on outdoor adventure, wellness, and meaningful travel. Recent stories include pieces for Travel + Leisure, Toronto Star, BBC Travel, Afar and Atlas Obscura, as well as the memoir Braver Than You Think.
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