Ever since I was a little kid, my nose was commonly found deep in a book. I have been reading avidly since the day I learned how. The first book I read that made me think politically was Harry Potter. I know you’re probably thinking that this children’s book is not political, but it was. The book addressed racism and facism even though it was for young children. JK Rowling has said Voldemort was modeled on Hitler, and reading this at a young age allowed me to establish an idea between what is right and wrong.
A more common book that almost every high schooler in America has read is Animal Farm by George Orwell. This book is Orwell’s view on communism and the Russian Revolution, attempting to highlight how corrupt governments can become.
Recently there has been a lot of discourse on social media about whether books should be political. But even modern books are political, like The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F Kuang, which assesses what a government can become if it gets to an unbearable point of corruption. Books have always been and always will be political. Under authoritarian countries, book burning is a common way to suppress the common man. Looking at both Chinese and German history, under these authoritarian regimes, books were burned and banned because they were political, according to Britannica, and Holocaust Encyclopedia.
When you look at why people disagree with books being political, it is generally because those people do not branch out in the authors that they read. Keeping politics out of books is something that cannot happen because reading allows people to open up to new ideas, showing that reading can be activism. The direction in which we are heading with people’s stance on books is one that will end badly; uneducated people will make uneducated choices — books hold education. It is important to read about human lives and the human experience.
Books can inspire and result in action. Books are, and will continue to be, political — as they should be.
