Imagine a child reading the story of a refugee girl who crosses the sea to flee a war. By the end of the book, that child has not only learned new words: they have felt fear, hope, anger, relief… This is one of the powers of literature: its ability to make us experience other people’s emotions, to open us up to the world of others.

Literature, as a school subject, not only contributes to the development of cognitive skills such as reading comprehension, written expression, and literary style recognition. It also plays a key role in the development of emotional intelligence.

Reading fiction is associated with higher levels of empathy , as it allows us to imagine what other people are feeling or thinking . Reading and listening to stories, even fictional ones, brings us closer to the people around us . Authors such as philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have also emphasized the value of literature as a tool for imagining other lives and cultivating empathy.

Our Zoom Out project invites schools and educational cooperatives in various countries to address inequalities through literature. In developing it, we considered these three key insights about the role of literature in developing empathy.

The journey into the alien

If we look at the history of literature, from ancient myths to classical theater and poetry, including fables and folk tales and their refrains, choruses, morals, dialogue, and rhymes, we can see that all these forms have one thing in common: literature has always been a way of talking about human relationships. But also, and above all, an invitation to break away from what is familiar.

Thanks to these written or heard words, we can imagine things we’ve never experienced: other ages, other genders, other relationships, other geographies, other religions, customs, and social conditions. We don’t just follow characters, but we immerse ourselves in their daily lives, their language, their networks and emotions, their worlds. Reading is, in a way, a journey into the foreign. And this journey trains us to look more closely and sympathetically at our everyday lives.

Literature is a journey that takes us to others and trains us in the ability to put ourselves (and feel) in their place.

Symbolic identification

When we talk about the relationship between literature and empathy, we often think of direct identification with what we read. However, the dynamics of identification don’t always occur so linearly. And herein lies another magical aspect of literature.

We often identify with contradictory feelings, like those embodied by the villains in books: this way, we can understand their anger, their weaknesses, and their fears. The process of identifying with literature often occurs from a symbolic stance. That is, it’s not so much about recognizing ourselves in a character as a whole, but rather identifying with some of their emotions, conflicts, or desires because these are also part of our lives. This way of reading helps us understand and understand ourselves with greater complexity and progressively, as we progress through the stories we read.

So the stepmother can be both the villain and the character who helps us separate the idealized mother (a security figure) from the everyday mother (with all her human imperfections). This symbolic dimension provides the basis for accepting, for example, that one can be happy and, at the same time, feel melancholy.

The importance of plural narratives

Although stories can encourage us to empathize with other people, when we only have one version of those stories—that is, of all those we consider “the other,” the otherness—we end up stereotyping them. So that stereotype quickly becomes our only version or way of thinking about others.

For example, if in stories the foreigner is always portrayed as a threat, or if in films racialized women only occupy secondary roles of suffering or sacrifice, we end up unconsciously associating those images with real people we perceive as different. And as writer Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie reminds us, the problem with stereotypes is not so much that they cannot be true, but rather that they should not be the only life story we attribute to otherness, since this does not do justice to the complexities of the cultures and societies that inhabit them.

To address these debates, Zoom Out is creating openly available educational resources that will foster critical perspectives on stereotypes in books.

That is, along with traditional tales like Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White , it’s important for children to have access to contemporary stories or stories from other cultures. Reading current stories that depict different types of families, holidays, or everyday landscapes, as well as stories from distant places told from within, broadens their view of the world.

Offering children diverse narratives fosters empathy and helps them better understand other practices, other ways of living, and, in short, other ways of being in the world.

And the colorin, colorado…

Although literature doesn’t always guarantee an empathetic response, it allows us to experience multiple perspectives. Reading isn’t just about reaching a specific destination (knowing a certain story or a certain style of writing), but rather taking a unique, one-of-a-kind journey in which characters, situations, and ideas transform us.

Through introspection and the encounter with what is foreign to us, reading challenges us and forces us to question ourselves and, ultimately, to recognize ourselves in other people.

Author Bio: Lorena González Ruiz is Researcher of the Intersectionality Line of the GETLIHC UVic-UCC Research Group at Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya