If you don't know where to start with people, try a book first

My Dallas Morning News column, from Saturday's Briefing:

I'm convinced that we would all get along better if we all read more — and not just tweets and Facebook posts that make us comfortable or books that reflect our own experiences. We need to bury our noses in unexpected literature.

I've been helping a ninth-grader understand Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird. She's enjoying the story and working hard to ferret out universal themes, the importance of setting and how the plot affects characterization. She's doing all that work with limited background knowledge. Her parents are non-Christian immigrants, which makes some of the 1930s Southern references particularly difficult to parse.

Consider, for example, when Miss Maudie talks about "foot-washing Baptists" and tells Scout, "Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of oh, of your father." If you're not familiar with Christian doctrine and various denominations within the church, these are tough quotes to place in context. And the whole novel is full of allusions.

The analysis is worth the reward, of course. We're having important conversations about sibling rivalry, prejudice and standing up for what's right.

My own reading lately has leaned toward historical fiction, with valuable lessons from the past that can inform our attitudes and decisions.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, set in France during World War I and after World War II, describes risks taken by female spies and atrocities committed by the Germans and those who supported them. There's no pleasure in reading of torture, but we can't afford to forget the cruelty of regimes that allow it, either.

The Dollmaker of Krakow by R.M. Romero is part historical fiction and part fantasy, with a wooden doll come to life who helps to rescue children from the Krakow Ghetto. Holocaust stories are never easy to read, yet that discomfort is a necessary reminder of a past we can't repeat and heroic souls who resisted.

Refugee by Alan Gratz follows the harrowing journeys of three refugee children — one escaping Nazi Germany, one fleeing Cuba under Fidel Castro and another leaving 21st-century Syria. It's impossible to read these stories without gasping, weeping and wondering more than once, "What would I take if I had to leave my home behind?" and "Would my family and I survive this kind of uncertainty and violence?"

One of my favorites of the year so far is The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani, named a Newbery Honor Book this week. My choices typically skew Western, and I lack sufficient knowledge of South Asia, especially given the number of my students whose parents were born there. This novel helps to build on my limited understanding of Indian foods, customs and beliefs.

The Night Diary takes place in India in 1947, as the country was establishing new borders and Pakistan was created. The narrator is a 12-year-old girl with a Hindu father and a Muslim mother (who died during childbirth) who must leave her comfortable life behind to emigrate from Pakistan to the new India.

The characters are fictional but plausible. Nisha and her family nearly die of starvation and dehydration. They witness and narrowly escape inhumane violence. According to Hiranandani, more than 14 million people crossed borders in the partition of India, and as many as 1 million died in the mass migration.

These are stories I didn't know, and now I need to know more. At the same time, I wonder what kind of historical fiction might eventually be written about 2019. What kind of fictional heroes will emerge? What themes will be remembered?

How can each one of us change the narrative now? How can we draw from history and literature to develop empathy that will then foster conversations, even when we disagree?

In these days of bitterness and turmoil, we'd be wise to consider the words of Atticus Finch. 

"If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

If you don't know where to start with people, try a book first.

Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. She can be reached at tyradamm@gmail.com.