Don't Dumb It Down.

With the new semester just beginning, a lot of us will be picking up a book for the first time in months. I want to gag at the thought. It's an epidemic of literary lethargy. Yesterday my best friend told me that one of the things she likes about me is that I "put her on to reading." You go girl.

I used to be addicted to Babysitter's Club books, then the Dear America series, then I graduated to the Teen fiction shelves at Barnes and Noble, and now the possibilities don't end (especially now that I work there). I remember bringing Little Women to class in first grade to read as we waited at dismissal. I didn't understand it at all. It was just to show off.

I suppose one of my inadvertent goals with my writing is to escalate literary interest amongst my peers who have settled in a rut of reading only Zane, or even worse, nothing at all. I suppose that reading my garbage is better than reading no garbage at all. I've heard so many times, casually, "I don't read." Do people realize what they close themselves off to by saying they don't engage in leisurely reading? I believe these are the people who think that Oprah is a character in Toni Morrison's Beloved, and that The Coldest Winter Ever is brilliant.

Am I supposed to start a literary revolution? Fuck that, I'm not going to be the architect who designs that movement. I just want to sit back and watch my surroundings move in the direction they please. I'll grow increasingly disheartened while reading my snobby Nabokov, as my peers eat UTZ hot chips and watch the movie version of every great novel written. People have grown so comfortable with announcing their complete disinterest in reading. Reading really is fundamental. At least maybe it will teach you the difference between "brought" and "bought," that "irregardless" and "conversate" are not words, and that for each word you overplay in your vocabulary, there are masses of synonyms.

I feel pretentious for saying all of this, but it's been on my mind. Don't let your brain turn to jelly. Exercise the powers of your literacy that some people don't have. Read a motherfucking book.



"They told me I should come down cousin, but I flatly refused, I ain't dumb down nothing." - Lupe Fiasco