For the past eight years, my life has consisted of stone-faced immigration officers and service as a teabag mule. At the age of 16, my family and I uprooted our monotonous and comfortable English lives and moved across the Atlantic to Florida. After living in the same house in the same town throughout my childhood, my mum’s work transfer exchanged familiarity for an adventure into the unknown. Returning to the UK two years later for university, I have since shuffled back-and-forth between continents, primarily to ensure that I remain an ever–present feature in the lives of my parents and brother. This week has seen another transatlantic trip, as I returned to the US for an expertly executed 50th birthday surprise for my mum. Apart from proving that I am a terror when in the throes of jet lag, these cross-cultural excursions have given me substantial pause for thought. There is little adventure in life more enriching than travel. Yet it is an experience dependent upon both disposable income and time. For those lacking these two conditions, however, there is another option: crossing cultures through literature.
In last week’s column, I talked about the importance of challenging the prejudice that surrounds controversial novels. This is in large part about stepping outside of personal comfort zones: a necessity of equal importance when it comes to cultural understanding through literature. It can take both conscious effort and thought to broach works set in unfamiliar territories. This is, I think, partially a product of school curriculums that focus on a restricted set of celebrated Western works. But step outside of the literature of your own culture, and there is a rich diversity of worlds waiting to be discovered.
The importance of fiction as a tool for cultural discovery is something of which most readers are aware. Yet it was only after reading Azar Nafisi’s fantastic Reading Lolita in Tehran that I was able to fully grasp the revelatory and educational potential of the medium. The book details Nafisi’s work as a professor of Western literature in Iran. In an effort to ensure that her most dedicated female students are able to read and discuss works prohibited by the State, she establishes a clandestine reading group. Reading Lolita in Tehran juxtaposes description of the group’s activities with revelation of the daily treatment suffered by Iranian women. It is a magnificent book. Providing an unrivalled insight into the female experience in Iran, Nafisi’s work also celebrates the vital role of literature in enhancing cultural knowledge and understanding. From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to Henry James’s Daisy Miller, reading Western literature provides Nafisi’s girls with an invaluable understanding of countries external to their own.
Admittedly, novels deliver a subjective and selective take on social experience. No one book can be representative of an inherently complex culture. However, literature provides a window that generally transcends stereotype and reductionism. It also offers the possibility of exploring why cultures have come to be as they are. My transition into the American way of life was eased by a recourse to books: Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Toni Morrison offered me some understanding of the history and social priorities that have fed the current US culture. Taken together, such works reflect the multifaceted nature of different civilisations. They cannot replace the immersive value of travel, but they supplement and enrich our knowledge.
When faced with a sagging bookshelf, the bibliophile sees only possibilities: unexplored worlds and the potential to grapple with big questions. Each book provides a different lens through which to see. But when crossing cultures through literature, it is the similarities, rather than the differences, that most impress. Literature is fundamentally unifying because it reflects a universally human desire to express and understand. Read Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy or Orhan Pamuk and you begin to realise the superficiality of cultural divisions. We are separated by different histories and values and those differences should be celebrated. But we must also recognise that which transcends territorial boundaries. Literature juxtaposes these two ways of seeing the world, casting light on both dissonances and commonalities. Travel undoubtedly broadens the mind. But it is through literature that the mind, and our understanding of culture, is both challenged and refined.
Laura Clarke is a full-time PhD student and part-time writer living in London. Although she is studying human rights, Laura finds plenty of time to indulge in her love of all things literary. She is known to travel the length and breadth of the UK in search of bibliophilic hotspots and headlines. You can catch more of her literary adventures at The Book Habit.
