"All literature is political"
About this Quote
"All literature is political" lands like a friendly provocation: not a scold, not a grad-seminar thesis, but a reminder that stories always choose sides even when they pretend they don't. Coming from LeVar Burton - a figure wired into American cultural memory through "Roots", "Star Trek: The Next Generation", and "Reading Rainbow" - the line carries the credibility of someone who’s watched fiction shape real life from inside the machine. Burton’s career is basically a case study in narrative as public policy: whose humanity gets centered, whose voice gets treated as "universal", whose pain is framed as history instead of headline.
The intent isn’t to reduce novels to propaganda. It’s to puncture the comforting myth of "apolitical" art, which usually means art aligned with the status quo. A story about "ordinary people" is already making decisions about race, gender, class, borders, policing, disability, family - what counts as normal, what counts as threat, what deserves empathy. Even escapism votes; it votes for what you get to forget and who never gets that luxury.
Subtext: if you care about literacy, you care about power. Burton’s long advocacy for reading isn’t just about self-improvement; it’s about agency. The kid who finds language finds leverage. In an era of book bans, "divisive concepts" panic, and algorithm-fed outrage, Burton’s line functions as a defense of imagination as civic infrastructure. Literature doesn’t merely reflect politics; it trains us for it, shaping the emotional range we’re willing to grant other people.
The intent isn’t to reduce novels to propaganda. It’s to puncture the comforting myth of "apolitical" art, which usually means art aligned with the status quo. A story about "ordinary people" is already making decisions about race, gender, class, borders, policing, disability, family - what counts as normal, what counts as threat, what deserves empathy. Even escapism votes; it votes for what you get to forget and who never gets that luxury.
Subtext: if you care about literacy, you care about power. Burton’s long advocacy for reading isn’t just about self-improvement; it’s about agency. The kid who finds language finds leverage. In an era of book bans, "divisive concepts" panic, and algorithm-fed outrage, Burton’s line functions as a defense of imagination as civic infrastructure. Literature doesn’t merely reflect politics; it trains us for it, shaping the emotional range we’re willing to grant other people.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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