"Reality is ugly. It is full of complexities & thorny moral dilemmas. Part of the function of literature is to present that ugliness as well as those dilemmas." 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚 "It is one thing to mount a considered critique about a literary text that one has read; it's another to do so without either having read the text, or worse, not understanding some of the basic premises of how fiction works." 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚 "Can literature be read without triggering, or, in fact, is part of the role of literature to trigger—that is, to wake & engage our complex set of emotions & experiences?" 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚 "... disagreement, discomfort, & dissonance can be viewed as required for intellectual growth." 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚 "I think we ought to read only the kinds of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?" - Franz Kafka. 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚 "Too Many cultural commentators superimpose contemporary sensibilities onto texts that reflect realities & cultural norms very different from the present." 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚 Literature & the New Culture Wars: Triggers, Cancel Culture, & the Teacher's Dilemma by Deborah Appleman spoke to my Soul. The nonfiction work that moves me most is the provocative variety. Something that may ruffle some feathers even if those that aren't mine. It's nice to read work that you know others will possibly/probably disagree with. Then the discourse happens where we get to learn from each other & my thoughts, perspectives, ideas, etc. may alter or outright change. We learn whether or not troubled texts like Huckleberry Finn, or if a work written by a living author without a favorable rating in the court of public opinion should be taught. We dig into the divisive topic of superimposing today's moral code on yesterday's texts. We learn about books being shutdown in a large part due to the opinions of people who haven't even read said books. We learn about the culture of book banning on the right & the left. You may feel discomfort when you read this: embrace it, if so—that's the discomfort of being challenged, the work literature SHOULD do.