Intimacy for the reader and the subject, but at a comfortable, controllable distance. Literature also provides a microcosm for general review of the status quo on an issue, on a people. It gives an opportunity to see, hear, taste, that is, to feel and to understand, to love, fear, and know others. Literature suspends or softens the obviously pedagogical into the aesthetic and the entertaining. It overcomes emotional neutrality.
Literature can make the abstract real and personal because it creates individual memories.
Literature is the best vehicle for educating against hatred because we all understand a story, from the tiniest child to the most sophisticated leader. All human beings have suffered from both, one is inexplicable, the other intentional. In the stories of people suffering from the results of intentional disaster or hatred, we can explore what is commonly shared by human beings despite their cultural diversity. The literature of suffering, particularly literature written by the suffering witness, is the most potent force for education against hatred because the act of writing from within the crucible of suffering is itself the exercise of virtue in adversity. To write from within the prison camp is an act of faith that the word will ultimately overcome injustice.