More than words: Books that mattered to me in college

The image of the stressed-out student bearing a bag full of books as s/he trudges to the library aptly reflects a significant part of the college experience. But what is in that bag, exactly? Across my college career, mine was at times filled with a heavy economics textbook (yikes) and introductory political science tomes. Later I scoured the library for every book I could find on youth, political participation, and the media for my senior thesis paper. Books, it would seem, make the student.

My freshman core seminar was an English literature class called Urban Fictions. The readings were based around the cities from which they originated and/or examined—from Baudelaire and Paris to Gloria Naylor and New York City. Nina Revoyr’s contemporary novel Southland served as a sort of cornerstone for the course since it was about Los Angeles, where Occidental College is located. The book is part mystery and part historical narrative about the Watts riots in 1965. I think that reading fiction that takes place wherever you are living at the time can be a particularly meaningful experience because literary writing can shed light on history and culture in ways that non-fiction accounts simply cannot.

Part of why I decided to attend Oxy was because I was born in Los Angeles, but reading Southland in my first semester of college opened up a whole different aspect of the city for me. Of course I recommend the book, but I also recommend seeking out literature about whatever city your new university is located—it can be a very valuable way to contextualize the start of a college career.

Interestingly, an introductory theater class required Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke as part of a memorization exercise. The book dispenses poetic advice and insight in the form of letters that Rilke wrote to a former student. Sometimes the advice comes off as a little cheesy and other times a bit grandiose—I remember gushing about the book to a classmate who rolled his eyes in apparent disagreement—but it’s a rare occasion that such a book is assigned these days, especially in a theater class.

We did not use the book very much beyond that early assignment, which left me with the slim volume of life advice that I’ve since re-read several times. I find the lyricism of the words comforting and the content motivating, a combination that can become very useful when adjusting to college life.

I took a Spanish class called Hispanic Autobiography the semester before I left to study abroad in Chile. Reading Mi País Inventado (My Invented Country) by famed Chilean writer Isabel Allende was an excellent way to prepare, plus I presented on the book with two classmates who were also getting ready for the same program. Reading about a place before you travel there is a time-honored way of enriching the experience, but Allende’s attention to detail and reflections on the nuances of daily life during Chile’s dictatorship also heightened my attention to detail in my own life and travels.

Sometimes when I look back on my four years of college, I see stretches of time and experience punctuated with what I read. None of these books were for classes in my field of study, politics. Of course several readings from courses in my major also stand out in my memory, but these are the peripheral three; a few volumes that formed a sort of cerebral border around the majority of my learning.

So there you have it. What books meant something to you in college? What should every college student read?