Literary Who Am I?

Dive into my world. A world of rabbits and sunsets, a world of circus tents and monsters, a world of music and superheroes. I will show you who I am and how I became this person, through the literary journey of my life.  

Literature has shaped who I am from a very early age.  I remember sitting on my mom’s lap as a small child, learning to read from my favorite books There’s a Monster at the End of This Book and The Pokey Little Puppy. When I got older, around third grade or so, I still got to sit on her lap and read from the Ramona Quimby series.  Ramona Quimby, Age 8 was my favorite.  It taught me that girls who were a little precocious (girls like me) could still have everything turn out alright in the end. 

I discovered true friendships in literature.  I found my favorite book of all time in middle school when we were required to read The Outsiders for school.  I loved the relationships the boys had with each other and how their friendships were stronger than any family. I watched Stand by Me, based on a Stephen King novella, which went on to become my favorite movie of all time.  Again, I found myself entrenched in the tight friendships between four boys who thought they’d never stop being friends. I read Of Mice and Men and cried when I figured out that sometimes love and friendship means sacrificing the one that you love the most in order to save them.  It tore my heart out.  I watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure at the movies (my favorite guilty pleasure movie of all time) and watched as those two friends traveled through time to help each other, not just pass history, but save the future of the planet.  It also taught me the most valuable and bodacious advice that everyone should always keep in mind – “Be Excellent to Each Other.”

I learned strength from literature as well.  In college, I remembered my love of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and picked up The Grapes of Wrath which has since become my favorite non-YA book of all time. The strong bond of the family and the strength and resolve of the characters in the face of such uncertainty and constant desperation never ceases to inspire me.  Ma Joad is one of my perpetual heroes and I strive to be like her every day.  I went on to discover a love for superheroes when my son asked me to take him to see an Avenger movie.  Captain America stands out to me as the strongest, most righteous.  He is the one who always does what is right, even when everyone else is doing the other thing.  He follows his morals, even if they are “wrong.”  He stands up for the little people and fights the bullies.  He is good for the sake of good.  No matter how many times he gets knocked down, he gets back up.  After all, he can do this all day.  People need that in their lives, especially me.  I struggled with confidence a lot in school.  But I was a musical theater major and I follow a lot of performances.  I have seen Wicked four times.  I believe Elfaba, and Captain America, would tell me to keep Defying Gravity.  

I could always escape into dreams, whether it be through a fantasy world or through lyrics in a song.  I have been taken away into the wonderful wizarding world with Harry Potter and I have been transported into the Night Circus. I have gone back into history with Hamilton and I have dreamed a dream during the French Revolution in Les Miserables.  I have visited heaven with Eddie in Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  All of these have taken me to fantastic places in my dreams.

Literature, no matter its form, shapes who we are.  We learn to stand strong like superheroes, we stay gold like Ponyboy, we persevere like the Joads, we escape into dreams, and we hold tight to our friendships like so many characters showed us to do. Literature reaches into our soul and twists its tentacles around our hearts in words and phrases, pictures and lyrics, stanzas and couplets – until we are walking, talking versions of it.  I am what I have read.  And it is me.  Literature personified.