It’s a small world after all. Global media and internationally interdependent economies have brought people of different countries and cultures closer than ever. This can be rewarding but, too frequently, we bump up against “the others” in harmful ways, often the result of ignorance and misunderstanding.

News reports may tell us “what” happened but unbiased journalism has been overtaken by market forces that present “news” through adversarial viewpoints, constricted by space or time limitations. The result is that, even with internet access to the world, we easily and unknowingly remain isolated from “the others”. We tend to fear what we don’t know; fear instigates conflict.

I suggest we treat good literature as ambassadors of understanding. There is a wealth of literature that opens a world of other cultures to us while entertaining us. Whether novel or non-fiction, these books inform and enlighten us as few “news reports” can because they bring us into the lives of “the others”.

Literature is not “news”; it doesn’t pretend to be. It does, however, allow us to inhabit new places, get inside other people’s skins, share their experiences and see life from other viewpoints. Soon, we begin to stop seeing the “otherness” and recognize the “sameness” of humanity.

Your port of entry into other worlds can be your library, book store or eReader. Here are some of the places you might want to visit:
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan (China)
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi (Iran)
The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri (India)
The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson (North Korea)
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
In the Time of the Butterflies – Julia Alvarez (Dominican Republic)
Stones from the River – Ursula Hegi (Germany)
Same, Same But Different – Benjamin Prufer (Cambodia)

For young readers:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie (Native American)
Same, Same But Different – Kostecki-Shaw, Jenny Sue (India/America)