Social Justice Themes

          Social justice themes and ideas are everywhere, and one very common place to find them is in books. Most books I’ve read, and am reading are filled with different social justice issues. Many and most times, these themes are very angering, frustrating, and just plain thought provoking.  Reading about all these ideas and issues have made me look even closer into the literal world we live in, and has made me much more interested and invested in specific types of social justice themes and issues.

I’ve just recently started the book, Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin. This book is about what it was really like to be a black in the South. The author, John Howard Griffin, darkens the pigment of his skin, and sets out to the South to discover what it is really like, first hand, as a black man in 1959. Although I am hardly a quarter way through it, I’ve already read so many ways in which racial injustice was displayed. For example, John Howard Griffin writes, “A few days earlier I could have gone in (to a restaurant) and ordered anything on the menu, but now, though I was the same person with the same appetite, and even the same wallet, no power on earth could get me inside this place for a meal.”  Reading this line made me extremely frustrated. I realized that this small event that took place to this man that had only just become “black,” and was only just starting to experience the extreme inequality towards those of “color”- this event had happened to thousands before him over and over again, (many times the events and consequences even more extreme then what John Howard Griffin experienced.) When I think even deeper about segregation and inequality, these issues appear very frequently in the world we live in. Although the type of segregation today may not mainly be because of skin color, it still appears everywhere on large and small levels.

Another book I’ve read including another type of social justice theme is Because I Am Furniture, by Thalia Chaltas, about a girl, Anke, whose existence is not really acknowledge by her abusive father, which happens to be very good in her case, because her father only abuses her older brother and sister. But years of seeing these horrors in her home have worn Anke down, and she eventually takes a stand. Reading this book, heavily weighed down with images and descriptions of intense abuse made me think about how these things are going on in the world around me right now. Things may seem nice and clean and crisp and happy on the outside, but the inside is different. Many children today are abused inside the walls of their homes, whether it be in this country, or others around the world, where there is child labor, or child marriage…

One last book that has very strong social justice issues is The Hunger Games. It appeals to so many because it really does address an extremely large variety of social justice themes and issues. In a sci-fi world called Panem, Katness, a girl living in the poorest of the twelve districts in Panem finds herself fighting for her life in the cruel and deadly Hunger Games held every year and enforced by the oppressive Capitol. One thing that the whole book is centered around is the totalitarian government. They control everything and everyone, which, as you can imagine, does not help to create a happy, peaceful environment. Although I read The Hunger Games a while ago, I know that although this government may be very extreme, the types of things that this government in the science fiction trilogy can be seen at different levels in past governments, and governments around the world today.