12 healing power of reading-Michelle Co

9 healing power of reading-Michelle Co

In a world that often feels overwhelming and chaotic, finding solace in the pages of a book can be profoundly healing. Reading offers more than just an escape from reality; it provides a refuge where we can confront our deepest fears, reflect on our personal struggles, and find a sense of connection and understanding.

The transformative power of reading lies in its ability to touch our hearts and minds, guiding us through our own challenges by allowing us to walk in the shoes of others, explore new perspectives, and discover inner strengths we might not have known existed. As we immerse ourselves in stories and ideas, we engage in a healing journey that can lead to personal growth, renewed hope, and a deeper sense of peace.

1. The Power and Limits of Reading-healing power of reading

I want to talk today about how reading can change our lives and about the limits of that change. I want to talk to you about how reading can give us a shareable world of powerful human connection. But also about how that connection is always partial. How reading is ultimately a lonely, idiosyncratic undertaking.

2. Discovering James Baldwin: A Lifelong Influence-healing power of reading

healing power of reading: The writer who changed my life was the great African American novelist James Baldwin. When I was growing up in Western Michigan in the 1980s, there weren't many Asian American writers interested in social change.

And so I think I turned to James Baldwin as a way to fill this void, as a way to feel racially conscious. But perhaps because I knew I wasn't myself African American, I also felt challenged and indicted by his words. Especially these words:

"There are liberals who have all the proper attitudes, but no real convictions. When the chips are down and you somehow expect them to deliver, they are somehow not there."

They are somehow not there. I took those words very literally. Where should I put myself?

3. The Mississippi Delta: Confronting Harsh Realities-healing power of reading-healing power of reading

I went to the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions in the United States. This is a place shaped by a powerful history. In the 1960s, African Americans risked their lives to fight for education, to fight for the right to vote.

I wanted to be a part of that change, to help young teenagers graduate and go to college. When I got to the Mississippi Delta, it was a place that was still poor, still segregated, still dramatically in need of change.

My school, where I was placed, had no library, no guidance counselor, but it did have a police officer. Half the teachers were substitutes and when students got into fights, the school would send them to the local county jail.

4. Meeting Patrick: A Story of Struggle and Connection-healing power of reading-healing power of reading

This is the school where I met Patrick. He was 15 and held back twice, he was in the eighth grade. He was quiet, introspective, like he was always in deep thought. And he hated seeing other people fight. I saw him once jump between two girls when they got into a fight and he got himself knocked to the ground.

Patrick had just one problem. He wouldn't come to school. He said that sometimes school was just too depressing because people were always fighting and teachers were quitting. And also, his mother worked two jobs and was just too tired to make him come.

5. The Conflict Between Staying and Leaving: A Personal Dilemma-healing power of reading

healing power of reading: I made it my job to get him to come to school. And because I was crazy and 22 and zealously optimistic, my strategy was just to show up at his house and say, "Hey, why don't you come to school?" And this strategy actually worked, he started to come to school every day. And he started to flourish in my class. He was writing poetry, he was reading books. He was coming to school every day.

Around the same time that I had figured out how to connect to Patrick, I got into law school at Harvard. I once again faced this question, where should I put myself, where do I put my body? And I thought to myself that the Mississippi Delta was a place where people with money, people with opportunity, those people leave. And the people who stay behind are the people who don't have the chance to leave.

I didn't want to be a person who left. I wanted to be a person who stayed. On the other hand, I was lonely and tired. And so I convinced myself that I could do more change on a larger scale if I had a prestigious law degree. So I left.

6. Returning to Help: A Heartbreaking Realization-healing power of reading-healing power of reading

Three years later, when I was about to graduate from law school, my friend called me and told me that Patrick had got into a fight and killed someone. I was devastated. Part of me didn't believe it, but part of me also knew that it was true. I flew down to see Patrick. I visited him in jail. And he told me that it was true. That he had killed someone. And he didn't want to talk more about it.

I asked him what had happened with school and he said that he had dropped out the year after I left. And then he wanted to tell me something else. He looked down and he said that he had had a baby daughter who was just born. And he felt like he had let her down. That was it, our conversation was rushed and awkward.

7. The Power of Literature: Books That Bonded Us-healing power of reading

When I stepped outside the jail, a voice inside me said, "Come back. If you don't come back now, you'll never come back." So I graduated from law school and I went back. I went back to see Patrick, I went back to see if I could help him with his legal case.

This time, when I saw him a second time, I thought I had this great idea, I said, "Hey, Patrick, why don't you write a letter to your daughter, so that you can keep her on your mind?" And I handed him a pen and a piece of paper, and he started to write.

8. Haikus, Poetry, and the Beauty of Silence-healing power of reading

We began our exploration of literature with haikus, those deceptively simple masterpieces that capture profound truths in just a few lines. Haikus are a celebration of the present moment, a quiet meditation on the natural world and our place within it. I would often ask Patrick to share his favorite haikus with me, and through these poems, we discovered both humor and beauty together.

One of our favorites was by Issa, which made us smile with its whimsical simplicity: "Don't worry, spiders, I keep house casually."

Another haiku that brought a touch of levity to our days was: "Napped half the day, no one punished me!"

Yet, it was a particularly gorgeous haiku that captured a moment of delicate beauty: "Deer licking first frost from each other's coats."

These haikus, with their understated elegance, were more than just words on a page; they were a way for us to pause and appreciate the fleeting moments of beauty and stillness in life. They invited us to slow down, to savor the quiet and to find meaning in the small details that often go unnoticed.

9. Patrick’s Transformation Through Reading

There's something mysterious and gorgeous just about the way a poem looks. The empty space is as important as the words themselves. We read this poem by W.S. Merwin, which he wrote after he saw his wife working in the garden and realized that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

"Let me imagine that we will come again when we want to and it will be spring We will be no older than we ever were The worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud through which morning slowly comes to itself"

Patrick loved this line: "We will be no older than we ever were." He said it reminded him of a place where time just stops, where time doesn't matter anymore.

10. Facing the Realities of Inequality: A Shared Story-healing power of reading

When you read a poem alongside someone else, the poem changes in meaning. Because it becomes personal to that person, becomes personal to you. We then read books, we read so many books, we read the memoir of Frederick Douglass, an American slave who taught himself to read and write and who escaped to freedom because of his literacy.

I had grown up thinking of Frederick Douglass as a hero and I thought of this story as one of uplift and hope. But this book put Patrick in a kind of panic. He fixated on a story Douglass told of how, over Christmas, masters give slaves gin as a way to prove to them that they can't handle freedom.

11. The Limits of Reading: What It Can and Cannot Do-healing power of reading

You're probably wondering now what happened to Patrick. Did reading save his life? It did and it didn't. When Patrick got out of prison, his journey was excruciating. Employers turned him away because of his record, his best friend, his mother, died at age 43 from heart disease and diabetes. He's been homeless, he's been hungry.

So people say a lot of things about reading that feel exaggerated to me. Being literate didn't stop him from being discriminated against. It didn't stop his mother from dying.

12. The Words Patrick Left Behind: A Daughter’s Legacy-healing power of reading

I want to close on some of my favorite lines from Patrick's letters to his daughter. These words reflect both his deep yearning to connect with her and his understanding of the power of words, even in the most difficult of times.

In one letter, Patrick wrote: "The river is shadowy in some places, but the light shines through the cracks of trees. The air is still, but alive with the rustling of leaves, and on some branches hang plenty of mulberries. You stretch your arm straight out to grab some, smiling, as your fingertips brush against the soft, purple skin of the berries. I imagine you laughing, sweet and free, your eyes bright like the sunlight breaking through."

He once shared a dream he had: "Sometimes I dream of walking with you beside a stream. We don’t talk much. The quiet says everything. The water moves, steady and patient, and I think maybe we’re like that—finding our way, together and apart, with the current. It’s the way life is. But I want you to know that even when I’m not there, my heart is always with you."

In another letter, Patrick reflected on what he wanted for her future: "I hope you’ll grow up to understand the music of the world. Not just the songs you hear, but the rhythm of life. Every step you take has a beat, every word you speak has a sound.

Listen to the earth beneath your feet, to the stories around you. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the words. I know this poem by heart, and I would like you to know it, too. Even when the world feels heavy, even when you don’t have the answers, remember that there is beauty in the silence, and power in the words you carry within you."

As I read these letters, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of what Patrick was trying to pass on. Despite all the hardship, despite the unimaginable challenges he faced, he found a way to express love, hope, and an enduring belief in the power of connection.

These are the things that reading can give us: the ability to connect across distance and time, to reach for understanding even when it feels far away. But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that while books and words can open doors, they cannot fully take away the pain of inequality, or the realities of the world we live in.

Yet, they give us something to hold on to—a bridge, a moment of shared humanity, a reminder that we are not alone. Patrick’s journey reminds me that while reading may not save lives in the literal sense, it can create a space for hope, for transformation, and for the deep, lasting connection between hearts. And maybe, in the end, that’s more than enough.

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