From the Bookshelves: "Harry Potter"

When I was seven, “Harry Potter” changed my life. Hardcover with a dust jacket embossed with gold lettering and illustration, it became as familiar as the architecture of my house or the layout of my bedroom. It was the story that quickly became a cultural touchstone that defined an entire generation: the tale of a boy wizard, his friends, and their adventures at boarding school.

J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” is my favorite childhood book series. In elementary school, I toted around 400-page tomes that weighed down my backpack. During evenings, I curled up on the sofa with the books, turning page after page while my brothers’ TV shows projected blue fluorescent light. It became difficult to think of anything else.

I came to understand that I inhabited two worlds: in one, I did multiplication worksheets and ate dinner with my family, while in the other, I accompanied Harry and his friends on treks through the Forbidden Forest and cast Transfiguration spells. I was so deeply invested in both worlds that it seemed incorrect to designate one “reality” when the other demanded as much emotionally and mentally. “Harry Potter” offers a full spectrum of emotions: heartbreak, contentment, terror, indignance. His triumphs became my triumphs, his losses felt as keenly and viscerally as my own. In my most formative years, “Harry Potter” taught me how to read a book. Not literally—as in phonetics and syntax—but how to delve into fiction, to become part of a world outside of your own.

Growing up as a racial minority in a homogeneous Midwestern city, I felt like an organ transplanted into a body insistent on rejecting it, a doll made from misshapen plastic pieces, a factory mistake. I was never the victim of a hate crime, but I noticed how some people spoke to me more slowly and loudly than usual. I didn’t look like most of my classmates. The subtlest forms of ostracism and marginalization perpetually colored my experience; I felt “other,” but only in silent, inarticulable ways. My self-esteem plummeted: I hated looking at mirrors, avoided talking when I could, and kept mostly to myself. I felt pressured to project the right version of myself to the right audiences. I wore so many masks that I feared I might forget what my real face looked like.

But the world within the pages offered me the opportunity to be more multifaceted than I could have ever dreamed. Sheathed in the story, I could be as fearless as Harry, as bookish as Hermione, as big-hearted and funny as Ron. There was no problem that couldn’t be solved with invisibility, or a necklace that could turn back time, or a potion that could cure bad luck.

So much of “Harry Potter” felt not only visceral, but applicable. Rowling imbued a fantasy narrative with real-world themes of race, ability, gender politics, and social class, a nuanced ethical lesson delivered through allegory and analogy. I understood how Hermione felt when Draco Malfoy insulted her non-magical upbringing. I knew how it felt to be told you didn’t belong. I knew what it felt like to stare into a mirror and wish for more, or to get knocked off a broomstick.

Though I held this strange dual citizenship in these fictive and real worlds, I still felt that inevitable, fundamental disconnect with the world of fiction. No matter how strongly I felt included in its narrative, no matter how deeply I longed to be a part of the story, I would never be able to interact with the characters I loved. I would always be on the other side of the page.

I learned to grapple with this tragedy the only way I knew how: by replicating the stories I knew and loved best. Afternoons after school, I spent hours at my father’s desktop typing out stories—albeit poorly written ones—that sometimes spanned 20 or 30 pages. I liked formulating plot, imagining characters, provoking urgency and action. In its grandest magic trick, “Harry Potter” taught me not only how to read, but also how to write and how to want to write. The books irrevocably imbued me with the desire to write fiction, to create worlds, a love that persists even today.

But nothing gold can stay. In 2007, J.K. Rowling published the final installment of the series. I felt as though something I loved was leaving me. Never again would I be able to read a “Harry Potter” book for the first time. Instead of rationing frugally, I consumed greedily, swallowed the final installment in one sitting. Now it was too late. Three years later, I watched YouTube clips of the final movie premiere. “No story lives unless someone wants to listen,” Rowling said, visibly tearful. “The stories we love best do live in us forever. So whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

Rowling was right, but it was not until this year that I realized how right she was. After a divisive and contentious election cycle, in the midst of a hostile political climate, so many people sought escapism in the stories they loved best. We all just wanted to go home. “Even Dumbledore wasn't enough to stop Voldemort, but I'm not going to let Death Eaters destroy our home,” one user tweeted. Another wrote, “Don’t worry, America, we still have another book left.”

When the person vying for the highest political office in the nation performed a derogatory impression of a disabled reporter, or crudely recounted encounters in which he disturbingly violated women, or promoted rhetoric that demonizes immigrants like my family, I vividly remembered the times I was made to feel that I did not belong. And I remembered the world of “Harry Potter,” where what made you different was what made you valuable and what set you apart became your biggest asset. I remembered the story that taught me to ceaselessly advocate for inclusion, even when it got difficult. I learned to celebrate friendship. To fight bravely for what I believed in. I was taught that love is protection, the strongest kind of armor there is and the stories I’d loved best had lived with me and surfaced in the darkest hours.