The first time I read a book cover to cover, I felt like I had been let in on a secret. At five, however, I didn’t yet know that it was a secret not everyone gets to be in on. That not all stories are told, and not everyone gets to see themselves on the page. I grew up in a small town where school libraries did not put stories of queer love on their shelves, where classrooms didn’t discuss things like race, power, or grief. At first, I read to escape. But as I got older, I read as a form of resistance and reclamation. I read to find words for the things I felt and to make sense of the things I didn’t understand. To see worlds I had never been shown. Literature didn’t just entertain me. It built me: one book, one question, and one dog–eared page at a time.
The libraries of my elementary and middle schools were my favorite places to pass the time. It’s where I discovered the first book in Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds series, the first dystopian novel I ever read. Bracken's book taught me that stories don’t always take you to a perfect world—they can also unsettle you and prompt you to think critically about the real world. I began to analyze the systems of power described in its pages, which paralleled the systems being built in the real world. I thought about how power can be weaponized and abused, and how fear can lead to cruelty. For the first time, I wasn’t just reading a story but questioning its themes, as well. What does it mean when cruelty is codified in law? When entire groups are stereotyped as threats to justify their erasure? These questions have stayed with me over the years, only gaining salience in an age where laws targeting gender–affirming care, drag performances, and books that deal with controversial topics abound. The Darkest Minds didn’t answer all of my questions. But it taught me to keep asking them—to trace power back to its source, to look for who speaks and who is silenced. That habit stuck with me, shaping how I understand the news, how I approach conversations, and how I write.
That was when I began to shift from a reader to a critic. I started to crave books that I could pick apart and identify symbols in, books complex enough to allow me to interrogate the writer’s choices. I was still reading young adult novels, picking them up from middle school shelves and the Scholastic Book Fair (my favorite event of all time when I was younger), but I would linger more on stories with weight—the ones that made me ask what it was that made them so powerful. I began to suspect that the best stories weren’t smooth and soothing—they were the ones that unsettled me, that made me question what I thought I knew.
Then the world went quiet. The pandemic hit at the end of my first year of high school, and I had to leave school earlier than most because I have a compromised immune system. I completed my sophomore and junior years online, logging into classes in the morning and using the afternoons to read. Reading became my escape again, but this time, I brought something new to the old practice: intention. I was still devouring a wide variety of stories. But I was also keeping track of what made them work—the lush intimacy of Crier’s War, the politics of The First Sister trilogy, and the bold, lyrical verse poetry of The Poet X. I sought out queer stories because of how hard they had been to find on the shelves of my childhood school. One in particular stayed with me: The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petras.
It was the first novel I had read where two queer girls were the center of the story, not just a subplot. Their love was messy, raw, and spiritual, yet it was the point of the entire narrative. Alongside their romance, the novel interrogated mass incarceration and its impact on Black communities. However, these layers didn’t compete for the reader's attention; they deepened each other's impact. The book taught me that writing can be messy and vulnerable, and that not all stories follow the same narrative arc. When I finished the book, I began to feel something strangely familiar. I realized that it was the same feeling I had as I read my first book as a child—I knew that I had been granted access to something private and precious. Only now, the secret wasn’t that words could form worlds, but that they could form stories that give every person a sense of belonging. Growing up without queer stories made me think that my life would always be confined to the subtext. Seeing queer love at the center of The Stars and the Blackness Between Them dismantled that. It made me believe, for the first time, that my story could be told without apology.
By the time senior year finally came around, I had transferred to an entirely different school, one with unfamiliar faces, hallways, teachers, and the looming pressure of college application deadlines. When it came time to sign up for classes, I decided to take AP English Literature. Soon enough, it became one of my favorite parts of the day. For each book we read, we’d come together to decode its language, analyze literary elements, and unpack the author’s choices. One of the books we read was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, a novel that demanded more from me as a reader than anything I’d read before. It was dense and nonlinear, told from multiple perspectives that dealt with a vast range of issues. As I continued reading, however, I was drawn in by Kingsolver’s writing, and I began to admire how each character was meticulously developed and given a distinct voice. I no longer believed that the loudest voice in a room was the most authoritative. I became more conscious of the people who were not included in the discussion and what their silence might signify.
It was the first time I realized that form could be just as powerful as plot, that the way a story is told is intertwined with its meaning. I annotated and tabbed pages as if I were in conversation with the text. This book also racked open another door for me—I realized I didn’t just love reading, but that I loved literature. I loved how I could identify symbols, decode language, and write essays about it. I loved pulling texts apart to see how they worked. I loved how books could challenge, confuse, and change me.
By the time I started college, I thought I wanted to study environmental science and maybe continue with literature as a hobby. But my English seminars, where we discussed symbolism, dissected sentences, and read aloud passages, were the classes I ultimately looked forward to the most. I realized I wasn’t drawn to literature just because I enjoyed reading. I was drawn to it because the stories we read shape how we see the world. Studying English taught me how to defend our access to challenging stories, how to raise awareness of works that might otherwise go unread, and how to challenge the structures that determine whose stories are told. Declaring my English major at the beginning of my sophomore year felt like choosing to guard the very secret that had been given to me as a child—only now, my work is to keep the doors of storytelling open for others.
Now, as a junior, I’m still chasing that first spark of wonder when a story lets me in, along with taking on the responsibility of making sure others can feel that same rush. Recently, I read I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, a book sparse in language but heavy with meaning. It’s a story about separation, memory, and isolation; about the ache of what you don’t know. Much remains unsaid and unresolved at the end of the novel, yet it resonated with me deeply. Harpman didn’t need to say more than what she did because the lack of a firm conclusion was the point. This time, the secret wasn’t just in the story. It was in the silence. And because of everything I’ve read—every book, every annotation, every question—I knew how to listen.
Stories gave me language before I had my own. They taught me to feel deeply, to question authority, and to imagine a world beyond my immediate surroundings. More than anything, though, they taught me that access is important. They taught me that everyone has the right to be challenged by stories that broaden their perspective. As we develop, the art we are exposed to shapes who we are. It teaches us to see beyond ourselves, to feel, to ask questions, and to empathize.
That’s why it matters who gets to tell stories—and who gets to read them. When people decide which stories are too much—too queer, too honest, too complicated for others to read—and take them away, they don’t just ban books. They take away someone else’s chance of being seen. Though they weren’t always cozy or well–known, the stories that shaped me taught me to listen, to sit quietly, and to know when to speak up.
