Books Build Bridges: Why Reading Is Essential Today
April 22, 2025 11:02
World Book Day 2025
The World Is Burning. Why Are We Still Reading?
Empathy, Stories, and the Courage to Cross Borders
Reading is not just a charming habit or a pleasant pastime. It is, first and foremost, an exercise in humanity. In a world that often feels fast-paced and fragmented, literature invites us to slow down, to listen, to step into someone else’s life. Through stories, we learn to feel, to understand, to imagine what lies beyond our immediate experience. Stories bind us together. They reconnect us, and help us build communities—not through sameness, but through shared understanding.
On this point, two women still have much to teach us: Rachel Andresen, founder of Youth For Understanding, and author Elif Shafak. From different perspectives—but with deeply complementary insights—they both remind us that storytelling is not just a means of communication, but a transformative act. It expands our empathy, challenges our assumptions, and invites us to live with greater openness and courage. And today, that invitation is more necessary than ever.
The narratives we immerse ourselves in—and choose to share—profoundly shape how we perceive the world and its people. Stories act as both mirrors and windows: they reflect our own experiences while offering a glimpse into lives and perspectives far removed from our own. The author Elif Shafak reminds us, that storytelling humanizes. It allows us to see the complexity in others and ourselves, especially beyond the surface-level differences that so often divide us.
In today’s uncertain times, as old systems collapse and new ones are still forming, empathy is essential. In this in-between space, disorientation and division grow, leaving many feeling like exiles in once-familiar places.
Yet, empathy— the act of truly listening and stepping into another’s story —offers a path forward. It’s not an abstract ideal but a practical necessity. Whether through a book or a cultural exchange, it asks us to momentarily set aside what we know and open ourselves to what we don’t. It’s an openness to holding space for multiple identities and truths at once.
This was the foundational belief of Rachel Andresen when she created Youth For Understanding (YFU) in the aftermath of World War II. Her vision was simple yet radical: healing a fractured world begins with human connection, one person, one story at a time. For Andresen, empathy wasn’t just a value; it was a practice, rooted in deep listening, honest storytelling, and the willingness to live alongside those different from ourselves.
Today, as we navigate a world that feels increasingly fragmented, Rachel’s mission feels more urgent than ever. YFU has never been just about travel. It’s about transformation—an invitation to step out of our comfort zones, to meet the “other,” and to discover that we have more in common than we ever imagined.
Both Andresen and Shafak, speaking from different corners of history, call on us to engage empathy as a bridge—not a sentiment, but a tool for social change. They remind us that stories carry power. In reading another’s narrative or in living within a new culture, we begin to question our assumptions, expand our horizons, and connect across difference. And in doing so, we slowly build a world less defined by fear and more grounded in mutual understanding.
Still, we live in difficult times—rife with injustice, inequality, and rising disconnection. A degree of pessimism, then, is not only natural but perhaps necessary. As Shafak notes, it keeps us aware, sharp to the patterns unfolding around us. But left unchecked, pessimism is corrosive. It drains our energy, clouds our judgment, and chips away at our hope.
We need to step out and meet “the other”. Stories help us stay alert yet hopeful, reminding us of complexity, identity, and the power of nuance in a world of noise and distortion.
Naturally, we are drawn to those who share our values and echo our beliefs. But that can’t be the end of our journey. If we only listen to the stories we already know, we risk mistaking comfort for clarity. True growth—intellectual, emotional, civic—requires that we seek out what challenges us, unsettles us, and even disorients us. Only then can we begin to reimagine community—not as sameness, but as a shared commitment to living with and learning from difference.
Rachel Andresen believed that young people are active builders of a better tomorrow. Through YFU, she planted the seeds of intercultural understanding, nurturing small groups that would go on to transform communities—not with headlines, but with lasting change. She knew that this work was never hers alone. It was, and still is, a collective effort: a community of people who chose to believe in the power of connection, empathy, and shared stories.
In an age of division, that legacy matters more than ever. Because to read, to listen, to cross borders—
whether literal or metaphorical—is to insist on our shared humanity. And that is where the future begins.
Looking for something to read? We have compiled a list of books written by YFUers on Goodreads. Check out the reading list here: https://www.goodreads.com/revi...
