WE DESERVE TO LIVE WITH ART by Emely Rumble, LCSW

WE DESERVE TO LIVE WITH ART by Emely Rumble, LCSW

We all deserve access to the healing and validation of our experiences that connecting with stories through literature provides. This truth is especially sacred for those of us whose lives are often relegated to the margins, whose voices have historically been silenced or ignored altogether. As a Black and Puerto Rican woman who has been a lifelong reader and a former library kid who found safety and comfort in shelves and stories, I know this intimately: literature makes art out of our lived experiences. In a world that continues to erase, censor, and sanitize those same experiences, the right to access books that reflect who we are is a matter not just of literacy, but of liberation.

Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop offered us a powerful metaphor that continues to shape how we talk about the importance of representation in literature. She wrote:

"Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror."

That phrase—when the lighting is just right—is one I return to often. It is not just a condition of light, but a condition of freedom. The lighting gets dimmed when books are banned or challenged for containing queer characters, for exploring the truths of racism, for centering voices from the global majority. When these books are stripped from library shelves or classrooms, the mirrors disappear. The windows fog up. And we, the readers need these stories most, are asked once again to live without reflection, to survive without access to truths that affirm our right to exist.

Censorship isn't just a political issue; it's a psychological one. As a psychotherapist and bibliotherapist, I work with clients every day who are searching for language, for story, and for meaning. Literature can be a life saver. It helps readers metabolize grief, understand the origin and impact of trauma, explore identity, and build empathy. And yet, the very books that do this work so beautifully are often the ones under attack. This tells us something vital: the threat of literature is not in its words, but in its power to liberate, to affirm, to heal.

This is a truth I’ve known since I was a little girl, sitting on the couch beside my maternal aunt who lived with untreated paranoid schizophrenia. She rarely left the house and often mistook TV shows for personal messages. Her favorite show was All My Children, and I vividly remember the day she insisted we make wedding cards for two soap opera characters—Jack and Erica—so that they could finally marry. I was only five and confused, but I sensed something fragile in her. I pretended to write, index cards in hand, to help her feel safe in a world she couldn’t always trust.

Later, I found myself drawn to the chaos and curiosity of Alice in Wonderland. Alice’s shock when she meets the Mad Hatter was how it felt to be left alone with my aunt—enchanted one minute, terrified the next. She could be playful and imaginative, then suddenly spiral into fear and paranoia. Imagining her as the Mad Hatter helped me cope. It helped me preserve the love I had for her while making sense of the unpredictability. Through literature, I gave shape to what felt unholdable. That’s what books do. They don’t fix what hurts, but they help us hold it. They offer metaphors for survival, and in that way, they become mirrors not just for who we are, but for what we’ve lived through.

Toni Morrison, in her collection The Source of Self-Regard, speaks directly to this refusal to live without art. In the chapter "The Individual Artist," she writes:

"I come from a group of people who have always refused to live that way. In the fields we would not live without it. In chains we would not live without it—and we lived historically in the country without everything, but not without our music, not without our art."

These words echo through generations. They remind us that art—and literature as a written form—is not a luxury. It is a necessity. It is resistance. It is memory.

Archiving our stories in books preserves more than narratives; it preserves memory. And memory is sacred, especially for communities that have been systematically stripped of theirs through colonization, slavery, displacement, and assimilation. When the lighting is just right, a book not only becomes a mirror—it becomes a portal back to what we must not forget. It allows us to say: We were here. We mattered. Our stories are worth telling.

This is why book banning is not a neutral act. It is not simply a question of whether children are "ready" to engage with difficult topics, or whether certain narratives are "appropriate." It is an effort to control which stories get told, and by whom. It is a form of cultural erasure masquerading as moral concern.

When I was a teenager, the books I gravitated toward were not always the ones deemed "safe" or "appropriate." They were the books that told the truth even when it hurt- because life can hurt. Books about Black girls finding their voice, about Latinx families navigating migration and memory, about queer kids wrestling with shame and discovery. These books didn't just entertain me; they made me feel seen. They gave me language for what I was experiencing. They made me braver.

And now, as an adult, as a therapist, as a mother, and as a writer, I return to those stories with gratitude and reverence. I see the ways they shaped my self-worth and my ability to imagine a life beyond survival. I see how they helped me access the sacred art of telling the truth. I see how they continue to nourish me—and my clients—as tools of connection, empathy, and healing.

So, when I hear about another school district banning books with Black protagonists or LGBTQ+ themes, I feel the weight of it not just professionally, but personally. Because I know what's being stolen. I know what it means to live without access to stories that reflect your complexity, your contradictions, your community.

We must continue to fight for literature that affirms intersectional truths. We must support librarians and teachers who risk their jobs to keep books on the shelves. We must write our stories, publish our stories, share our stories—because to do so is an act of resistance.

And we must read. Widely, curiously, and unapologetically.

Because we deserve mirrors. We deserve windows.

We deserve doors to worlds that help us make sense of our own.

We deserve to live with art. Always.