# data[].attributes.headline
Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer

# data[].attributes.subject
Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer

# data[].attributes.body
In Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer, author Murphy Paul argues that people who read more literature tend to be more empathetic towards others. More specifically, Paul emphasizes that “the emotional situations and moral dilemmas that are the stuff of literature are also vigorous exercise for the brain, propelling us inside the heads of fictional characters and even, studies suggest, increasing our real-life capacity for empathy.“ In other words, literature allows us to see the world from different people’s point of view, and can help us be more empathetic towards people who are different than ourselves. This is an elaboration of the big idea in the piece: reading online websites does not provide the same rich benefits of “deep reading,” and, if not properly exercised, our ability to read beneficially can decline.

# data[].attributes.body
"My throat nearly burst open. I stood up, talking and burbling. I looked directly at my mother and at my father and screamed..."
pg. 201

# data[].attributes.body
"She said I would grow up wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman."
pg. 20

# data[].attributes.body
"That one? she said, pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn't my house and started to cry. I always cry when nuns yell at me, even if they're not yelling." pg. 45
The nun assumes Esperanza lives in the projects since she is Mexican-American. Esperanza only agrees with the nun to avoid conflict. While she does live in poverty, Esperanza does not live in the projects and the nun only assumes she does since she's Mexican-American.

# data[].attributes.body
"[The kids] are without respect for all things living, including themselves."
pg. 29
While their mother is so consumed in grief over her husband and the rest of the people on Mango Street are too preoccupied with their own problems to pay attention, the kids feel unwanted and unworthy of love. To cope with this the children act out and play dangerously; eventually, one of the girls kills herself to end her misery.

# data[].attributes.body
"Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor."
pg. 9
Esperanza feels trapped in Mango Street (poverty). While she is very smart and has the potential to "fly away like a balloon," she is held back by her gender and her ethnicity and her financial status. Rather than being "too lazy to help her situation," Esperanza actually has to fight against all the systematic oppression keeping her from grand opportunities in order to move away from Mango Street.

# data[].attributes.body
In The House on Mango Street, a nun at her school assumes Esperanza lives in the Projects because she is Mexican-American. While this stereotype is applicable to some Latino-Americans, Esperanza did not live in the projects and neither did many other Latino-Americans, so this stereotype cannot be applied to the Latino-American community as a whole. Additionally, Esperanza watches women “look out of the window” her whole life because they are tied down by their husbands. She dreams of living by herself so that she can write in piece, rather than wishing to get married to escape the poverty of Mango Street.

# data[].attributes.body
In Warrior Woman, Kingston grows up with many mixed messages of who she should be as a woman; her mother tells her of strong women in China, as well as women who were ruled by their husbands and fathers and neighbors. Additionally, Kingston has to navigate the American images of womanhood. She looks up to Fa Mu Lan and hopes to be strong, and lashes out when she believes her parents are trying to arrange a marriage for her. Rather than conforming to the traditional role of a Chinese woman, Kingston decides to be her own person and not be ruled by another person.

# data[].attributes.body
In The Bluest Eye, Pecola constantly looks to popular media to see what “beauty” should look like. She is led to the belief that she is not beautiful since she does not have blue eyes like Shirley Temple. While Pecola nearly worships white women and white beauty standards, the narrator Claudia despises Shirley Temple, white baby dolls, and other images of white beauty standards. She hurts little white girls by pulling their hair and scratching them. This is all Claudia’s way of coping with the unfairness of the beauty standards of the time. Rather than hoping to conform, Claudia lashes out in her anger towards the blatant racism, even before she has the words to describe her anger.

# data[].attributes.body
In Invisible Man, the protagonist is supposed to be happy in his situation at an all-black college (run by white men) and not recognize the systematic racism working against him. However, after he is expelled from college, he begins to recognize that nearly every part of his life is working against him - his former black headmaster, his employers, his limited job offers, the Brotherhood, etc. He resorts to “hibernating” beneath a large apartment building and plans to come out for the revolution that will end systematic racism.

# data[].attributes.body
Chinese-American

Female

Coming of age

Immigration (feeling like one doesn't belong, even though 2nd generation)

School (2 schools, contradicting cultures)

Family Dynamics (mother telling two stories of womanhood)

# data[].attributes.body
- African-American
- Male
- Invisibility
- Higher education vs. adulthood

# data[].attributes.body
African-American

Female (ideas of beauty and worth)

Childhood

Family Dynamics (mother ashamed, father abusive, brother runs away),

School (bullying)

# data[].attributes.body
Mexican-American

Female

Coming of age

Poverty (and shame)

Language  (different names in different languages, different worlds, etc.)

# data[].attributes.body
A single story is that people in poverty are lazy and not working hard enough to get out of their situation. However, the story is often much more complicated. People of color can have a harder time getting jobs due to systematic racism and therefore are stuck in a cycle of poverty. Additionally, the shame associated with poverty can also impact people’s life choices and opportunities. Cisneros shows this through the racism present in Esperanza’s school and Esperanza’s mother dropping out of high school because she was ashamed of her clothes.

# data[].attributes.body
A single story is that Chinese women have a certain place in society and should live to have children and make their husbands happy. While women some women like Moon Orchid lived lives to try to please others, Kingston’s mother, Brave Orchid, tells Kingston stories about Fa Mu Lan and other brave women to let her daughter know there is not just one path. As Kingston grows up, she does not conform to her traditional stereotype and chooses freedom instead.

# data[].attributes.body
A single story is that it is a girl’s fault for getting pregnant, not her rapist’s. In other words, society often blames individuals for their problems and refuses to recognize that social norms can be the cause of those problems. After Pecola was raped by her father, her community shuns her and calls her a whore. However, both she and her parents have never experienced real love before, with her mother as a cripple and her father as an unwanted child, and are told again and again by society that they are neither beautiful nor worth anything. This constant societal abuse has caused this family to suffer so much so that Cholly, Pecola’s father, is led to rape his own daughter for not knowing how else to “love” her.

# data[].attributes.body
This book is full of historically racist imagery, such as the paper puppet and the coin bank, which were used to associate black people with being goofy, uneducated, and uncivilized. The main character is a scholar and a public speaker and works to have his voice heard, but, due to systematic racism, his voice is constantly covered by white society. His college headmaster writes “recommendation” letters to employers to keep him unemployed and the Brotherhood, a communist organization promoting equal rights, tells the narrator that he must sacrifice his own equality for the “greater good” of the organization. However, the only “greater good” in the eyes of white society is to do whatever it can to keep black people out of power.