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Reading always helps

by Vicky Dickson

I’ve often thought that the ability to read is one of the things I’d most hate to lose. If my memory started to fail, and, like my father, I became unable to follow the storyline of a novel or understand a magazine article, what would I do all day? How on earth would I occupy my time?

From left, authors Robert Goolrick, Marisa de los Santos, Kevin Wilson, Daniel Wallace, Lee Smith and Natasha Thetheway at the recent Orange County Literacy Council Writers for Readers luncheon. Photo by Alicia Stemper.

So the statistics cited by Robert Goolrick at the Orange County Literacy Council’s fifth annual Writers for Readers luncheon are dismaying, to say the least. After describing the “flush of shame” he felt at being unable to read a Greek newspaper during a sojourn in that country, the author of A Reliable Wife noted that 15 percent of adults in this country are functionally illiterate. They are people who experience the shame of being unable to read, and the crippling effects of that inability, on a daily basis. Goolrick asked why the richest country on earth ranks 40th among nations in its literacy rate.

Good question. But it is heartening that organizations like the Orange County Literacy Council are working hard to remedy illiteracy, and that they’re spreading the word through events like their recent book and author luncheon.

Along with Goolrick, this year’s luncheon featured Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Natasha Trethewey (Domestic Work, Native Guard) and best-selling authors Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang) and Marisa de los Santos (Love Walked In, Belong to Me). Honorary chair was Lee Smith, author (most recently) of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, and the highly entertaining emcee was Daniel Wallace (Big Fish).

Volunteer tutor Ian Morse and his student Casio Noell started things off by talking about their relationship and its benefits.

Casio Noell (left) chuckles as volunteer Ian Morse relates some of the adventures the pair has had while working together through the Orange County Literacy Council. Photo by Alicia Stemper.

“This program, it changed a life like mine,” Noell stated, noting that he’d gone from being a high school dropout who got involved in gang violence to being on the verge of obtaining his GED.

Trethewey then spoke of how the power of words first grabbed her through a story about a St. Bernard with a cask of brandy that saved a man trapped in the snow. Being only in the third grade, she’d never had brandy – but the words made her feel as though she could taste it then and there. That’s when she knew she wanted to be a writer.

De los Santos told of how her 12-year-old son developed a crush on Anne Frank, a girl whose diary made her probably more real to him than many others in his life.

“The best books,” she said, “give us the ability to emerge from them … with more empathy for those around us.”

That point was echoed by Kevin Wilson when he described how reading to his 4-year-old son enabled the boy to realize that “people aren’t simply bad or good, but in between.” Growing up, the author had found it terrifying to be in a room full of people, so the books he read even while brushing his teeth became, in some ways, guides to how to live.

“Books offered a safe place for me to interact with others outside myself,” he said.

Wilson brought the lunch crowd to its feet when, speaking of struggles with anxiety and Tourette syndrome that sometimes led him to be hospitalized, he told us that, “One of the things that always helps is reading.”

We shouldn’t forget that. Reading always helps – so we need to do whatever we can to help people learn to read.

Another opportunity to support the valuable work of the Literacy Council comes to the Friday Center on March 24 at 8 p.m., when literacy students will share their personal stories and Wallace’s short film Two-Legged Rat Bastards will have its world premiere. Tickets are $50 and include beer and wine as well as dessert. Check it out at themonti.org