The art of reading

Last March 4, IamGenM columnist Hyacinth J. Tagupa wrote “Learning to read,” in which she recalled how some public schools in the Philippines lock up their libraries due to fear of the books getting damaged by young students. She observed how adversely this practice has affected developing minds; how young students are allowed access to books only if it is necessary for research and such; and how this has created a generation that approaches and promotes reading only in a pragmatic way. Instead of young minds being encouraged to dwell in the creative world of books, they are barred from such an experience, she wrote.

Reading this made me realize how lucky I’ve been in terms of reading materials. Throughout my life I’ve had access to libraries fully stocked with books, and I needed only to bring my library card to be able to borrow whatever I wanted—three, four, five, or even six books at a time. As the child I was back then, I found them very colorful, and pretty to look at, too. Sure, the Chinese sections were bigger in some libraries, but they still had a great selection of books in English to pick from. In fact, in some libraries, a whole floor would be dedicated to books in English. Whenever I found a library with such a feature, I felt pretty lucky.

The first true library I ever had the privilege of frequenting was one of Hong Kong’s public libraries in the New Territories. And my mom was the first to expose me to this world. She had a great affinity for books herself, having grown up with a mother who was very fond of the written word. My maternal grandmother is gone now, but she loved books and encouraged my mom and her siblings to read as much as they could. I’m thankful to her for this, as the habit of reading has been instilled in me, too.

It was lonely for my mom in Hong Kong back in the early 1990s, because my dad was at work most of the day. He was one of the architects in the Hong Kong airport project back then. And once I started going to school at a local English kindergarten at the age of 3 in 1998, my mom felt even lonelier. So she went to the library practically every day to overcome the feeling. Then she started to bring me along after my classes.

It was a great escape from the loneliness I also felt. Despite the kindergarten being English, I was pretty much the only non-Chinese kid there. And with that came the silent judgement and ostracism by my classmates because of my nationality, which was deemed composed only of cleaners, helpers or trash-pickers. Most didn’t think I belonged with them in the classroom. Oh, it wasn’t like they were vocal about it, but kids can be very cruel when they want to be, with whispers spreading and toys taken out of my hands merely because they wanted to. My Chinese classmates were clannish; they stuck to their own and excluded anyone different. At least that’s what I felt most of the time. And getting blamed for things I didn’t do wasn’t pleasant. And teachers had favorites, and of course I wasn’t one.

So the library became a welcome escape for me. Books don’t judge and characters live vivid lives that are pleasant and more exciting than the one I lived. I also learned that the written word was immortal. That’s when I became an observer, disconnecting from life and the people around me in favor of fiction.

When we briefly moved back to the Philippines during the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, we settled in my dad’s hometown and I went to school in an adjacent town for half a school year or so. It was the only private school that had lessons in English, so I was enrolled there. It was the first instance I experienced the locking of library doors. It wasn’t even much of a library, really, but a small-to-medium-sized room half-filled with books.

As a child, I was outraged by the locking of the library. I had grown up visiting the public library in Hong Kong almost every single day, and the room called the “library” was pitiful compared to the ones I had visited. But I had to get accustomed to it, even though it left me feeling lonely without the company of books. One misses fictitious characters whispering in one’s ear after a long while, after all.

Moving to Macau soon after was the greatest thing that happened to me in terms of my pursuit of literary worlds. Literature class was mandatory from Primary 4 (Grade 4) upward, and involved  studying and analyzing novels, plays and short stories. We were also encouraged to write our own stories.

There was even an exam where we had two whole hours to write whatever creative ideas we could muster. There was also a time allotted for “silent sustained reading,” one of my most favorite times of the day which lasted for an hour at most every day. The only thing we needed to do during that time was read any book we wanted.

And that’s when I went crazy, reading anything I could get my hands on at the school library (which was stocked with the oldest of classics to the most recent literary creations). I was the school loner-bookworm, who befriended the classics, Agatha Christie, J.R.R. Tolkien, among many others. In a way, I used books to protect myself from other people, as one of my mom’s brothers once astutely observed. Books were my best friends, and no human could ever offer the same thing they offered me.

Given my history with books, I think it is really quite a shame to deprive young children of the chance to develop their mind and/or escape reality. It just seems so cruel to me, but it happens. Books are, after all, one of the greatest gifts to humanity; because of them, readers get transported to various stories, adventures—an escape from reality! And there are things only books can teach, such as empathy with and sensitivity to other people and their differences.

It is an outrage to keep knowledge from willing minds, because once they mature, the chance to nurture their reading habits will be gone.

Open up the libraries! It’s better for books to be worn out from repeated reading than from the wear of time.

Rafelle M. T. Allego, 21, studied mass communication at the University of the Philippines.