A simple portal
Transporting Ourselves
Books remain one of the most powerful tools we have to understand people, ideas, and the world around us—even in today’s fast-paced digital age. While a Google search might take just seconds, the act of reading allows us to pause, reflect, and truly engage with stories that offer depth and perspective.
What makes reading especially valuable is how it allows us to see life through many different lenses. By choosing books set in different times or places, we can step into someone else’s experience and better understand the world we all share.
These stories give us a chance to learn and grow—not by focusing on differences, but by recognizing the shared emotions, challenges, and hopes that connect us. By reading diverse voices, we gain deeper insight into the richness of human experience and expand our view of what it means to live in community with others.
If you’re curious about exploring life through the stories of others, here are five powerful books that open doors to new understanding.
1. The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini
This book is one of those rare finds that can be hard to put down the moment you open it. Set in Afghanistan during the 1970s, the plot follows the life of Amir, a twelve-year-old boy, who carries a great passion for kite-fighting.
Desperate to win an upcoming local tournament, Amir befriends Hassan—a boy who becomes his close, loyal friend and promises to help him win. When Amir witnesses an unforeseeable experience that happens to Hassan, the event instantly shatters their friendship for the rest of their lives.
For anyone looking for a book filled with packs of action, suspense, and emotion, this is one that I highly recommend. To this day, I cannot think of any other work that has managed to capture the indescribable, one-of-a-kind experience I went through while reading it.
“One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I’d just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn’t have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.”
2. Memoirs of a Geisha By Arthur Golden
In an intimately written memoir, this book is without a doubt one of the most exquisite and moving literary works of art about the true confessions of a celebrated geisha in Japan. From the start, the story unfolds with a lyrical and authentic tone that instantly captures all of your attention.
Golden wonderfully lets us in on all of the heartaches and tensions involved in the journey of becoming a geisha. Piece by piece, he paints a powerful picture of what it feels like to live in a world where a woman’s appearance can drastically dictate her opportunities and destiny.
This is a wonderful read worth looking into if you are looking for a mix of historical fiction and romance. Considered to be a bestselling sensation, you can bet that this book has all the feels of a classic novel that you just might find yourself rereading over and over again.
“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
3. Born a Crime By Trevor Noah
This is an unforgettable novel in which Trevor Noah chronicles his childhood in South Africa during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous time of freedom that followed. Born to a white Swiss father and black Xhosa mother, he shares his personal story and struggle of being born a crime, a consequence of his birth.
As living proof of his parents’ criminal act, he was kept indoors for the earliest years of his life to avoid the extreme measures from the apartheid government. Following the liberation of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Noah gives us an up-close image of what it was like for him and his mother to embrace whatever resources they had to make the best of the country’s centuries-long struggle.
Using informative prose combined with humor and wit, Trevor Noah cleverly incorporates his famous comedic style into his writing to make his story a moving and engaging read. If you enjoy works of nonfiction and autobiographies, this is one that I firmly believe belongs on the list.
“I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother, her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don’t hold onto the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass kicking your mom gave you or the ass kicking life gave you, you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s ok. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade for a reason. Because now, it’s time to get up to some shit again.”
4. The Pillars of the Earth By Ken Follett
If you are interested in reading something based on the time of the Middle Ages, this book has all of the medieval vibes you might be looking for. Set in the twelfth century in England, it is a magnificent tale about making the impossible possible—building the most supreme Gothic cathedral in the world.
Using his famous suspense-building style, Follett richly brings to life all of the day-to-day drama and excitement that could rise up in a historical backdrop filled with castles, monasteries, walled towns, and vast forests. Intertwining a mixture of narratives and different characters, he enchantingly draws us into all of their dreams and adventures in such a vivid way.
I found this book to be such a page-turner with plenty of cliffhangers, making it so exhilarating and intriguing every step of the way. It reminded me of Shakespeare’s works in that Follett masterfully plays with different storylines, uniting them with irony and foreshadowing throughout every chapter.
“But there was something more important than all that, he thought. What Tom had given him was nothing so commonplace as food and shelter. Tom had given him something unique, something no other man had to give, something even his own father could not have given him: something that was a passion, a skill, an art, and a way of life.”
5. The Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan
With a collection of personal accounts from four mothers, four daughters, and four families, this is a novel that shines a light on the stories of Chinese immigrants after recently moving to San Francisco. Every week, the women meet up to play mahjong and tell stories of their past lives in China.
Highlighting poignant themes of loss, heartbreak, and new hope, Amy Tan delivers a deeply emotional tale that speaks about the tender connection between mothers and daughters. Revealing each woman’s secrets one by one, she slowly unpacks the story of her life as well as the complexity of family relationships.
This is an incredibly unique read, one that shows what it is like to grow up as a first-generation immigrant in a new country. Highly regarded as a bestselling book, it is worth checking out for an intimate understanding of the cultural experience.
“So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened, the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter’s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
Understanding through Story
Reading gives us a way to connect more deeply with people—past and present, near and far. Because with so many works covering a span of unique identities, there is no reason not to look into what makes us curious.
These stories remind us that no matter where someone lives or what they’ve gone through, there’s always something we can relate to and learn from. The more we read, the more we begin to see the world not as “us and them,” but as one shared human story, full of meaning, struggle, and hope.
A different lens
