you’ve been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)

[matsushima]

Your relationship with reading is more than likely a direct result of your experiences with authority figures as a child.

In a great many iterations. If you were lauded for reading, put on a pedestal in front of your peership, it might be stress-inducing to return to work the muscles you know have atrophied. Are you still good or worthy of help if you cannot read voraciously, like you did as a child? If you were labeled a problem, difficult in class, slow… I bless and keep you. Worse, if you were made to feel less than because of your reading ability (unintelligent. burdensome. a waste of space. bound for prison) then you likely have a literal stress-response when someone mentions or suggests reading to you. Reading is a site of trauma your body holds onto for most of us. Anyone that suggests reading must not understand what you went through. Every objection imaginable will materialize when someone suggests that you try to read.
-ismatu gwendolyn, you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)
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Comments

[matsushima]

I've been thinking about this article since I first came across excerpts of it. I'm a librarian - not a reading teacher, as I keep reminding my boss - and I try to make the library a place where reading is fun, even joyful, but I'm not sure that I'm actually accomplishing that.