How many of us have been conditioned, either through education or community culture or parental expectations or all of the above, to be ashamed of your interest in “non-academic” or “low-brow” literature? Please know that I use heavy quotation marks around those terms because it’s those terms that drive the stigma.

My love of English literature study started in high school when one of my teachers introduced colors to represent themes in books. We assigned specific colors each theme, using highlighters to mark up books as a tool to analyze the authors intent and master critical thinking. This was a pivotal moment because, up until this class, English lit study was driven by dry study guide questions at the back of the book. Remember those? You couldn’t have paid me money to feign interest in those questions. They did absolutely nothing to help me connect to the story. But colors? Absolutely. Turning my books into art made reading critically into a fun scavenger hunt, developing a strong connection to characters, perspectives, language, meaning, and emotions.

Truth time: I did Shakespeare competitions. Would you like to see my nerd card? It’s laminated. Shakespeare competitions brought in a sort of similar element of “other” to literature, like the colors did in my English class. Faced with the challenge of memorizing a complex soliloquy, you needed to truly understand the depth and meaning of the words. You had to embody those meanings and allude to the, sometimes, double or triple meanings. Cadence was important as well, which allowed the words to take on a musical quality. In turn, I ended up really liking Shakespeare, if you can believe it, and I have my three inch thick complete works book to prove it – it also doubles as my laptop riser, thankyouverymuch.

Throughout college, I earned by English BA through study of old, middle, and new English works. I actually enjoyed Beowulf and Paradise Lost. I took women’s lit, science fiction, and creative writing courses, which all helped to open my mind of various forms of storytelling. Did I actually read all of the books? No. Did I yadda yadda my way through some of these courses? Yes. Yes I did. In the end, I learned how to appreciate the art of the written word through history and see how it developed over time.

But then…it all stopped. I graduated with a shiny degree and no plans to become an author, teacher, or anything else to do with literature as a career. Reading became a chore. I had zero interest in it and zero interest in changing. Sure I picked up a book here and there, but reading as a core part of my being, a thing I dedicated years of time and money on just disappeared. So what happened? Well, I had been conditioned to believe that there’s only one kind of “acceptable” reading and that is “high-brow” literature; the kind with symbolism, metaphors, beautiful language, and subtext. The kind that publishing houses and journals and universities deem worthy of taking up space in our minds. Unfortunately, in our society, there’s a whole bookstore’s worth of novels, short stories, poetry, manga, fanfic, and other categories that don’t fit in to this definition. Does that make those words less than? Absolutely not. So why aren’t they respected? Why do we sometimes feel shame for reading them?

Embracing all kinds of books and modes of reading has truly changed my life. I fell into the Ice Planet Barbarians world at the pinnacle of a mental health crisis. Ruby Dixon gave the me opportunity to put my brain on a shelf for a little while, as I hyper-focused on survival in alien lands – and super sexy, gigantic, blue beings. These stories gave me something to think about when I couldn’t fall asleep at night. They calmed me down, made me smile, brought light back into my heart, and halted the black hole depression spiral. I can still clearly picture the landscape and characters that Ruby described in her novels, just as well as I can picture Gatsby’s mansion. Why would I deny myself from consuming all kinds of books, just because someone else has decided to categorize them in a certain way? I hope that as more and more people start accepting all forms of literature that we start to remove the stigma.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear other perspectives, if you’ve had this experience or not. Let me know in the comments below! 🙂