In an article posted earlier here at PostScholastica, I talked about approaching my community college students as individuals as opposed to representatives of social, political, or ethnic groups. So I was happy to find a TED talk given by Turkish novelist Elif Shafak where she discusses the power of storytelling and its capacity to bring us outside and beyond our parochial “circles.”

Shafak reminds us that we all live within cultural circles of one kind or another, and these circles tend to isolate us from those of other cultures, nationalities, religious affiliations, etc. who are likewise huddled within their own circles. She argues that these walls we build up around ourselves create the danger of drying up our souls by preventing us from seeing and feeling our shared humanity with all people. One way to transcend these boundaries and travel beyond them is to read quality fiction: “When we are reading a good novel,” she tells us, “we leave our small cozy apartments behind, go out into the night alone, and start getting to know people we have never seen before and perhaps have even been biased against.”

Shafak tells us that when we are confined within our circle, all the other people we interact with are mirror images of ourselves. Such a limited perspective creates a cocoon of ignorance and the tendency to identify people outside the circle in stereotypical ways, while fiction can broaden our worldview: “Identity politics divides us; fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations, the other in nuances. One draws boundaries; the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water.”

When I choose novels for my students to read, I try to pick stories that will take them to places that are strange and unfamiliar, that will present a world to them that they cannot see when they look into their mirrors. As Elif Shafak says, “Literature has to take us beyond; if it cannot take us there, it is not good literature.” This fall, I am assigning her novel The Bastard of Istanbul. I hope it will transport my students into a circle many of them have never stepped into before.

Here is her TED talk: