The enduring magic of reading out loud
My dog-eared copies are a record of my survival as a young widow. We read Wendell Berry's 'Whitefoot,' in which an intrepid mouse survives a flood by clinging to a floating piece of wood. 'She clung, hunched and shivering, to the little log as it tilted over the waves, seeing only the great light …' And there was 'Emily of New Moon,' about an orphan who scribbled letters to her dead father and wrote, 'Life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.' I believed her.
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Enter Email
Sign Up
By the time my daughter reached high school, we had gradually abandoned the ritual without really noticing. Now that she's a junior, I spend more time reading excerpts to her from college prep books with names like 'Who Gets In and Why,' 'Soundbite: The Admissions Secret That Gets You Into College and Beyond,' and 'Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be.' Like everyone else, we binge-watch our share of comfort shows. 'Another one?' she says when an episode finishes.
Though there's not a lot of research on teens, many of the proven benefits of reading aloud to children may carry over. Young children aren't the only ones who need emotional regulation; teens are also going through a
Advertisement
Reading aloud together feels like an oddly subversive act, given the siren call of screens and scrolling.
It forces us to slow down and pay attention. We humbly fumble our words sometimes. We hear beautiful sentences uttered aloud. We read timeless stories that make us feel less alone.
Reading aloud shouldn't be relegated to bedtime with young children. When my friend broke her ankle, I showed up at her door with a bag of pastries and an offer to read from a book of short reflections by Madeleine L'Engle. 'Please read another,' she told me when I'd finished one. My parents tell me they have read Leo Tolstoy's 'A Calendar of Wisdom' to each other at the kitchen table over breakfast. At a recent funeral, a friend shared a Louise Bogan poem she had also read aloud at the bedside of her dying mother.
Books offer us nuance, meaning, and things to 'weigh and consider,' in the words of Francis Bacon. Anne Lamott calls stories 'medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits.' Perhaps reading them aloud to each other is the act of courage we all need right now.
Reading with my daughter over the years has given us a common vernacular, a collective imagination, and a lexicon of hope. That night before the SAT, I almost went in search of our old favorite picture books; instead, I picked a favorite book of mine, Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer,' and positioned myself on her bed, noting how her feet touch the footboard now. It had been a long time since I'd sat there like that. I read and she laughed at all the right places. Percy has a wry sense of humor. 'Should I stop?' I asked her. 'No,' she said. 'A little more.'
Advertisement
Julia Cho is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
Marcelo Gomes da Silva should be freed
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up The arrest came as part of stepped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Massachusetts over the past few months. The agency seems to have boosted its arrest numbers by widening its net. Of the roughly 1,500 people that Operation Patriot apprehended in Massachusetts, 790, or barely over half, had prior charges or convictions. The government's own tally implies that another estimated 710 community members had no criminal records at all. Advertisement Among them is Gomes, an honors student from Milford who officials say was a 'collateral arrest' — their name for arrests of people who are undocumented but have no criminal records, encountered by immigration agents in the community. Advertisement The Trump administration has argued that collateral arrests are more likely in places where local police don't cooperate with immigration authorities. If agents could just pick up criminals from courthouses or police stations, the argument goes, they wouldn't have to venture into the community where they're bound to run into other undocumented people. But the argument doesn't hold up under scrutiny — in the Gomes case and in general. The teenager was driving a vehicle belonging to his father, who officials say was the real target of the operation. But there is nothing publicly known that would suggest that the father was free because of anything the state of Massachusetts did, or that state officials could have turned him over to federal immigration even if they'd wanted to. Reporting by The Boston Globe found that the elder Gomes had faced traffic violations two years ago, which were later dismissed. But even if the state of Massachusetts had failed to cooperate with the feds to detain the father, the idea that immigration agents therefore simply had no choice but to arrest 'collaterals' it encountered while looking for him is false. Immigration officers didn't have to arrest Gomes; they chose to. If collateral arrests were really more common in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, one would expect to see fewer of them in places that do cooperate with immigration enforcement. But that doesn't seem to be the case. See Operation Tidal Wave in April, which apprehended 1,120 undocumented immigrants across Florida. Only 63 percent of those detained had prior criminal arrests or convictions. The problem may be that arresting noncriminals could be the only way to reach the deportation numbers the Trump administration wants. The Trump administration recently imposed a new target of 3,000 arrests a day, but contrary to the president's rhetoric, there just aren't enough actual immigrant criminals to meet those numbers. Advertisement Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration, is clinging to anecdotal and often misleading cases to justify its tactics. In a Two of these men were 'arrested' while in custody at state prisons — where the justice system was already punishing them. A third man had been arrested by a New York police department, not federal agents. And the fourth man was a lawful permanent resident, not an 'illegal alien,' as the release claimed. We didn't need to deeply analyze this particular press release to find these gaping errors — the Trump administration simply published information that was in direct contradiction to its own claims. It's scary that people this sloppy with the facts also have the power to make life-changing arrests. Its high-profile blunders also include mistakenly If there's any method to this madness, it may be that the Trump administration thinks it can use arrests of people like Gomes to pressure local governments into aiding with its immigration agenda — to raise the costs for cities and states that don't cooperate. Advertisement But if Gomes's plight is an indictment of the Trump administration, it's also an indictment of Congress. Proposals to normalize the status of young people like Gomes have widespread support but have stalled in Congress for years. If lawmakers had acted, thousands of kids and young adults would no longer fear being deported to a country they may barely know because their parents chose to break immigration laws. Lawmakers should get serious about protecting those young people. Meanwhile, immigration officials should focus on actual safety threats — and Gomes should be back in our community. Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
To judge is human. To persuade is AI?
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up The study's finding is consistent with Advertisement AI tailors its arguments differently when it knows something about a user than when it does not. With background info, AI can identify common ground before making its case. If AI knows, for example, that it's dealing with someone with a liberal political affiliation, it will use arguments popular among liberals, such as the importance of immigrants to the national culture and economy. If a user leans conservative, the AI highlights ideals such as lack of government intervention or regulation. That means an AI with even fairly basic information about users can make them more receptive by tapping into their confirmation bias — in other words, by affirming their existing beliefs. Advertisement This might seem manipulative, but the AI is assessing the rhetorical situation, which involves figuring out what will and won't appeal to a specific audience and adjusting arguments accordingly. I teach this concept to my rhetoric students at Boston University. When presented with evidence that runs counter to their views, many people cling even more firmly to their positions — a phenomenon known as the ' Of course, humans should be better than AI is at understanding and bonding with fellow humans. Why aren't we? For one, our ability to 'read the room' AI doesn't shout, curse, judge, threaten, or doxx users. That's one reason AI can more easily change someone's mind: Freedom from judgment and retaliation liberates the mind enough to allow people to consider other viewpoints. AI also deploys an age-old human bonding technique: mirroring. Experiments have demonstrated that if an interactive robot smiles at you, you'll probably smile back, and vice versa. We all do this beginning in infancy as a way of expressing and emulating other people's behavior and emotional states. If an AI discerns that you're smiling, it might tell you a joke so it can capitalize on and match your positive mood. Mirroring can also involve language choice and tone, which is another reason AI excels at it. Establishing even a fleeting bond via mirroring makes humans more likely to cooperate with an AI or robot. Advertisement Perhaps AI succeeds in part because humans so often fail at effective communication. The bar has become frighteningly low for interactions, both online and off. If displaying a modicum of respect and not spewing vitriol gives AI a communication advantage, that's on us. If a noncorporeal, nonhuman entity can read the room and connect with people better than most humans can, something is seriously off. Research into AI reveals what's too often missing in human interactions: common ground, curiosity, and compassion. Perhaps two of the ways AI will serve us best are by reflecting the failures of human societies in its black mirror and reminding us that we can do better. In turn, that perspective can help us choose what or who we want to become — and how.
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Boston Globe
From MAGA to ‘TACO'
For a man who built his Make America Great Again brand, in part, on his cartoonish projection of strength, there can be no nastier comment than calling Trump a chicken. Advertisement With his mean-girl insults and movie-villain glare, Trump relishes being the self-righteous crusader who squares up against his enemies. Even during an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally last summer, Trump, his ear apparently grazed and bloodied by a bullet, pumped his fist in the air and yelled Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up That image, which Trump has Advertisement 'So I just tried to think of a catchy acronym, and TACO happened to be the most kind of amusing one that I could think of,' Armstrong said. It's amusing others as well. After Trump again walked back one of his trade-war threats, MSNBC host On his late night show, 'Let's Go TACO' is also a spin on 'Let's Go Brandon,' which, during former president Joe Biden's White House tenure, became a stand-in for a profane anti-Biden chant popular among Trump supporters. Why TACO riles Trump is obvious. It exposes the indecisiveness and chaos he tries to pass off as calculated leadership. But it also takes one of the president's favorite devices — deploying a punchy phrase such as 'You're fired,' from his reality show days on 'The Apprentice'; 'fake news,' now a staple of the autocratic lexicon; or his 'Big Beautiful Bill' — and flips it against him. Advertisement '[TACO] is actually entering the mainstream culture, and we can see this right here in Google searches,' Harry Enten, CNN's data guru, said during a recent segment. He pointed to a chart that showed a whopping '9,900 percent increase' in searches of the acronym between Tuesday and Thursday of last week. Armstrong came up with TACO to address Trump's erratic trade war. But the notion that he chickens out can be applied to other things, including his barely there negotiations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on ending the Kremlin's unprovoked war against Ukraine. If Democrats calling his strange tangents during campaign rallies 'weird' during the 2024 presidential campaign got under Trump's thin skin, then TACO, which jabs at his weakness, cuts right to the bone. Back in the day on 'Saturday Night Live,' Chevy Chase portrayed then-president Gerald Ford as an inveterate klutz, which, right or wrong, publicly branded him as an incompetent dolt. Now, more than anything Democrats have concocted to counter Trump 2.0, TACO could have the same power to define and undercut this destructively unstable presidency. With one memorable term tailored specifically for Trump, the troller-in-chief is getting deservedly trolled. Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
