The magic of books

TODAY I am going to shovel aside all those weighty academic reasons that explain why people should read. Forget about building your vocabulary and honing your comprehension and analytical skills. They’re important, but here is what I want you to really see.

When I was ten years old, my aunt June stood in her bedroom, reached up and plucked a copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott off the shelf.

“This is a good book,” she said. “I read it when I was your age.”

I began reading, and I was amazed. Here was this happy family like I could never imagine. Jo with her rebellious streak of independence meant I could dare to believe in writing a book. Beth’s story jolted me into the realisation that not all characters had happy endings in books.

Twelve years later, my aunt would die of breast cancer, but I can still see her standing in her room when she handed me magic in a book called Little Women. Books have this way of connecting us to people forever.

My aunt also introduced me to the historical novel Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor.

“If you like Gone with the Wind, you’ll love this,” she said when I was 16. I still recall the delight in my assistant Nicha’s eyes when she started reading Forever Amber after I recommended it to her.

Nicha loved scandalous characters in literature and this story of Charles II’s mistress sparked discussions that created an early bond between us when I became a librarian. A book can help you gain acceptance in the work place.

Fifty years ago on Christmas eve, I opened a Christmas package and found a pair of ice skates from my dad. He took us deep in the woods to use our new skates, and when I closed my eyes, I kept having visions of the book Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge.

My aunt had introduced me to this classic too, and now I was skating and imagining scenes on a frozen Dutch river. Books have a way of making life experiences more meaningful.

Of course we can’t forget I discovered Miguel Street by VS Naipaul. That book with its quirky characters led me to my life in Trinidad. As I always say, a good book really can move you.

A few years ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I picked up a book called War As They Knew It because I wanted to understand the bitter rivalry between my alma mater, Ohio State University and the University of Michigan.

In that book, I learned that the tension and downright hatred displayed by the two states, which plays out in sports, dates back to The Toledo War when Ohio took the northwestern city of Toledo from Michigan in 1835.

No one remembers that, but the bad blood continues. Feelings can be passed down long after the cause for them are over, and sometimes we discover the root cause of those feelings in a book.

Then came a discovery that had a profound impact on my life. It was one line in a book called His Excellency George Washington by Joseph J Ellis. The historian wrote that the US Revolutionary War in 1776 would have been lost had Washington not visited Barbados in the only trip he ever took outside of the US.

While visiting Barbados, he got small pox, which gave him immunity when it ravished his troops. That one line sparked an interest in the connection between the West Indies and the US that led me to write a book entitled Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the US.

The chapter I wrote on West Indian Alexander Hamilton’s role in shaping the US led me to Lynn Manuel-Miranda’s musical Hamilton, based on Ron Chernow’s biography of the West Indian born in St Kitts.

When my daughter, Ijanaya, wanted to visit New York and stay at the Library Hotel, we bought tickets eight months in advance. By the time we saw the play, the cost of tickets (if you could find any) were over US$2,000 apiece on the black market. We had bought tickets for US$150.

I knew about the play just as it hit Broadway because of the book I was writing. We saw the entire original cast. I have that memory with my daughter, which will last a lifetime for both of us.

This Christmas season I hope everyone will experience the magic of books.