Recommend books about Empathic Justice

Cafe Society
1

I’ve mentioned in the past that the school I work for has a theme for each year, and that our summer reading books are chosen to reflect that theme. Well, I’m now on the committee that picks those books, and I’d like to ask for help. Our theme next year is “Empathetic Justice”. More specifically:

We, the committee, will come up with a list of a dozen-ish books, and every member of the school community (student and adult) is expected to pick at least one of those books to read over the summer, then in the fall we meet with our homeroom groups to discuss the theme, in the context of the books we read.

All books should, of course, be appropriate for high schoolers, though they don’t necessarily need to be specifically geared towards that age range. Since we’re an all-girls school, female main characters and/or authors are a plus (though not essential), as is diversity of other sorts. All genres are included.

So, any recommendations?

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Might try:

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher.

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The establishment of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international event. Never had any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop Tutu offers his reflections on the profound wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience.

In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu argues that true reconciliation cannot be achieved by denying the past. But nor is it easy to reconcile when a nation “looks the beast in the eye.” Rather than repeat platitudes about forgiveness, he presents a bold spirituality that recognizes the horrors people can inflict upon one another, and yet retains a sense of idealism about reconciliation. With a clarity of pitch born out of decades of experience, Tutu shows readers how to move forward with honesty and compassion to build a newer and more humane world.

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Can the books be either fiction or nonfiction? Is there a preference?

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We’d like as much of a variety as we can get, so that there’s an option there to appeal to everyone. This year, we had three nonfiction, two historical fiction, a fantasy (we’d have liked to have a science fiction, but none of them made the cut), a graphic novel, a book in verse, and five contemporary realistic fiction (some young adult, some adult).

Well, ideally, we’d have something for everyone, at least. In practice, only about half of my homeroom students actually read their book this year :frowning: .

@Ulfreida and @susan , those both look like likely candidates. We had a book by Archbishop Tutu (and the Dalai Lama), The Book of Joy, a couple of years ago (for the theme of Emerging Wisdom).

6

It might be a stretch, but take a look at The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It starts with terrible climate change effects, later goes to various efforts to counter it (some not legal), unlikely relationships, and the push for a unified response. I reviewed it several years ago for college students (first year university-wide reading), but couldn’t tell you if it’s age- or high school standard-appropriate.

7

That’s probably also a good one. One concept that we (and the religious order we’re affiliated with) have been trying to emphasize lately is integral ecology, the idea that care for the environment is the same issue as caring for other people. We were looking at a book dealing with climate change this past year, but it unfortunately turned out to be a terrible fit for our theme that year, and not very good in general.

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Well, it’s fifty-year-old historical fiction about an eighty-year-old historical setting, but have you considered Bette Greene’s award-winning 1973 young adult novel Summer of My German Soldier, set in the mid-1940s?

In that book the official practice of empathetic justice is notable mainly for its absence, but that’s kind of the point. That is, the teenaged Jewish American girl and the (anti-Nazi) escaped German POW whom she befriends and shelters are both ill served by the rigid demands of retributive justice. They, and the African-American housekeeper who helps them, reject that punitive enmity in favor of empathy and understanding, and then have to face the consequences of their choice.

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It came out less than 4 years ago, but in fairness those four years did seem reeeally long. It’s a great book and the writing is fine for high schoolers, but it’s very long so might be a challenge in that respect.

I’m hesitant to suggest Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It fits your wish for SF and has good themes of appropriate justice, but it’s pretty out there and maybe too much for high school.

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I wondered this about that Leckie as well.

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Would The Girl with All the Gifts fit? Science fiction (zombies), the protagonist is a girl, and it’s not difficult reading.

It’s post-apocalypse when most people have been infected by a fungus that turns them into “hungries”. But those conceived after the outbreak, like the protagonist, retain their human qualities in addition to a taste for human flesh. It has a strong theme of compassion for those different than you and what justice for all groups would look like, with plenty to debate on if the girl’s eventual actions were empathic and the right thing to do.

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With a theme of “empathic justice,” is the intent that the stories be inspiring and morally uplifting? Or is there room for nuance, in which good intentions aren’t always good enough?

I ask because this immediately made me think of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, which is about the limits and traps of empathy as a motivator for wanting to help people. It’s about an expedition to another world, led by a Jesuit priest (and is a consciously allegorical exploration of historical Christian missions). They encounter a peaceful and intelligent but non-technological herbivorous civilization, and, seeing a bit of early humanity in their situation, happily set about teaching them organized agriculture. But before long, the situation blows up in their faces, because they had incomplete information about the situation, leading to terrible consequences.

It’s a meditation on how good intentions can blind you to complex reality, and about how the desire to help can lead to tragedy if you can’t tell the difference between empathy and projection. Really tough-minded and sophisticated stuff. It might be too heady for an average high schooler (and there’s some weird alien sex stuff in the closing chapters), but a smart older teen could handle it, I think.

As an alternative, I’ll also suggest A Closed and Common Orbit, the second book in Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series (and far and away my favorite of the four). It’s about a shipboard AI, previously bodiless, forced by complex circumstances to leave her ship and occupy a humanoid body as her “vehicle,” accompanied by a human caretaker who guides her in navigating her new life.

It’s very much about empathy and standing up in the face of injustice. The AI character is seen as less than a person by the authorities, who will confiscate and destroy her if they realize what she is, and the caretaker character also has a background where she’s perceived as less than a person. The caretaker is the only one who sufficiently empathizes with the AI, and she in turn was rescued from her own past by another shipboard AI who empathized with her plight.

True, it is the second book in the series, and the AI character’s situation comes directly out of the climax of the first book. But the background worldbuilding is pretty effectively re-established, and the AI protagonist is re-introduced, so I think the book would stand reasonably well on its own. There is some discussion of side characters going off to enjoy themselves in what are essentially orgiastic parties, but I don’t remember it being described very explicitly. I plan to give it to my SF-mad daughter when she’s 14 or 15, if that helps.

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It’s not necessary that Good completely win in the end (when does that ever happen?), but I’d think we’d want examples where someone at least managed to make the world a better place. After all, we’re trying to teach the students to practice empathetic justice, here.

14

The first season of the anime Psycho Path portrays some interesting and unusual views of law, justice, and utilitarianism. But I don’t think it’s available in book form. I saw it with subtitles: I’m not sure how good the English dub is.

Two classic philosophical treatments of justice are Plato’s Republic and Rawl’s a Theory of Justice. I’m not sure how empathic the first is and I would only assign a chapter or two to a high school student. Even assigning Book 1 of the Republic is a lot. Maybe this article would work for Rawls.

15

So, the committee met today, so I thought I’d offer some updates.

Another member had also already read The Ministry for the Future, and we both agreed that while it was good and on-point, it’s also pretty heavy (both long and dense). It still has my recommendation, though, because I like books like that, and we do want to have an environmental book.

I read The Girl with All the Gifts myself, and while I enjoyed it, I didn’t pass that one on to the committee. Between a few gruesome scenes like the vivisection, the sort of language used by some of the characters, and Melanie’s highly ethically debatable decision at the end, I didn’t think I could recommend it.

I’m currently reading Summer of my German Soldier, but it’s likely to get cut. It’s good, but pretty lightweight for high school, and it doesn’t really bring anything unique to the table.

I also recommended the Amish book and the Desmond Tutu, and haven’t read either of them yet, but I suspect both are likely to make the list.

It was also pointed out that we’re currently pretty thin on books from a Middle Eastern/North Africa perspective (only one graphic novel on the list, so far). Anyone have any good recommendations there?