With the rise of ‘Booktok‘ and the reading challenges on Goodreads, it seems that this consumerist way of reading has led to a rise in the idea that reading is no longer associated with political commentary, or that reading is simply just a ‘leisure’ activity. While it is important sometimes to read books simply because you enjoy them, we must also acknowledge political fiction’s role in mirroring the real-world landscape as we know it.
By discouraging people from reading books simply because they are ‘too political’, you are discouraging knowledge of the sociological issues which can be easily comprehended through the act of reading fiction. A great example is George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a short book in a simple style and with an easily understandable plot. Within just over a hundred pages, Orwell draws analogies to the Russian revolution and shows the corruption of power using hardly any political jargon. Political reading doesn’t have to be a tedious task, and certainly shouldn’t dissuade readers from doing it in their leisure time.
Literature has always been a form of communication, a way to show readers what the world may have censored from us. Reading is how we develop critical thinking skills, giving us the ability to read underneath the surface for messages that may not be immediately seen. By ignoring these skills completely and only seeking ease in books, we are ignoring topics that have great importance in today’s society.
To ignore political literature rules out not only most books, but prevents knowledge which is so easily accessible. A study in the Netherlands in 2023 found the number of readers is decreasing and therefore, reading skills like critical thinking have declined in recent years. Reading needs to be prioritised in children’s education as a lifeline, that can not only teach us about politics but also about the world and people around us.
This is is not meant to dissuade us from reading books wrongly branded as less academic such as genres like romance or young adult fiction. Even though a book may not be labelled a classic, this doesn’t mean the author didn’t have a purpose in writing it. Reading these books still teaches us to put ourselves in someone else’s position and to empathise with them.
This internet competition of finishing as many books as possible is another huge factor for why political literature is no longer being considered, as racing through a book doesn’t allow you to grasp the undertones that the author has meticulously placed there.
All good books are created with the purpose of giving the reader something critical to think about, and it is our responsibility as readers to think about the often political undertones that books possess. Otherwise, we are devaluing the power of reading as a form of raising awareness about issues within our society.
In the 2021-22 school year, a journal article by Goncalves found more books were banned in US school districts than any previous year. Using a dataset of 2,532 bans that happened in 2022 school year, the findings showed that banned books are disproportionately written by people of colour featuring people of colour, and national and state levels of interests in books are largely unaffected after they are banned.
The Guardian shows that in 2023-2024, more than 10,000 books were banned, over triple the amount of the year before. PEN stated that “state regulation was also particularly critical in accelerating book bans, making it easier to remove books from schools without due process”. Some of the most banned books include The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X.Kendi.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, is a fictional book which raises awareness for the current conditions of women in Afghanistan. Before reading this book my awareness of the conditions there were limited, however Hosseini’s harrowing portrayal of the struggles of the women within the novel spurred me to research what these women must endure on a day-to-day basis.
Similar to Hosseini, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a form of speculative fiction, where Atwood recalls how everything she wrote in the novel has already happened somewhere in history. Other books which demonstrate politics in different ways are novels like Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica, a twisted story regarding the consumption of humans in a world that has ran out of animals to eat – which could be seen as a criticism of late stage capitalism.
To stay away from political books for fear of boredom is a show of privilege. To be able to have the luxury of reading for free by the use of a library is in itself political. Having access to books which are censored in other countries is a luxury. Being able to afford a brand new book is political. Being able to read is political. Being able to go to university and to do your reading is political. These issues cannot be ignored in the world of literature.
It is important to remember that reading is always political, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Political literature develops our view of the world and the society we live in, and allows us to connect with others who may not have a voice to communicate themselves. If we lose the base of literature as being political, what will be the point of literature?
