Lilly Gonzalez

I am not the most optimistic person. This assignment—being tasked to come up with five things I know about America and somehow avoid entering a depressive funk—seemed impossible. It is hard to feel optimism or inspiration or hopeful when you pay attention to the news or you look at the data behind any social issue in America: the state of healthcare or education or poverty, etc.

And yet.

Here I am in San Antonio, Texas, chipping away at my small corner of the nation, trying to make a difference in my local literacy environment. Here I am, trying to inspire individual children in San Antonio to develop a love of reading so that they may go on to become readers because studies show that readers become engaged citizens who vote, volunteer, visit museums, patronize theaters, etc. Here I am, manifesting a community of civically engaged readers who care about one another’s stories and ideas and who value literature. Here I am, hoping to drag the needle just a little so that our literacy rates are less abysmal. Here I am, hoping.

The problems of the nation, nay the world, can suffocate the heart. They can oppress the soul. So I choose to focus on my city. And when that gets overwhelming, I look at my neighborhood, at my backyard, at my own four walls. Hope is in the details. In the small tasks. It’s there for us good-deed-doers. We need only look.

I used to be student activist. I once had all the hopefulness of youth and believed that I could change the world. And then I entered the workforce and the cynicism set in. But the ideals and the vision…well, those never really go away. It just grinds you down when you see no wins.

So when I see today’s youth mobilizing and protesting, I’m reminded that for most of this nation’s history, the youth have always been on the right side of every civil rights movement or social justice issue or political debate.

When I see the youth rejecting the old capitalist structures many of us have come to accept as the norm or the default, when they question why we are overworked, when they refuse to adopt conventional attitudes about bodies, beauty, or gender, well, I catch myself smiling. It’s a sigh of relief, in a sense, to know the youth will inherit America.

Changemakers are all around us, helping set the country on a more just and equitable path. Whatever your industry, there are individual Americans working on making things better.

I work in books. In Texas. Luckily, I have a front row seat to my favorite helpers: librarians. Amid book bans and school budget cuts and district layoffs and library closures, Texas librarians are leading the fight for students’ freedom to read. I see their impact, big and small. I see them work tirelessly supporting their students, seldom recognized for their work by the decision makers in the legislature or the school district or the school administration. I see them champion books that make their students feel seen and validated. I see them sign up and volunteer to do even more if it means their students will have a valuable learning experience. I see them testifying before the legislature. I see them pushing back against those who want to ban books in Texas schools.

And then I tell them that I see them. I give them flower crowns and sashes like they’re pageantry—because to me they’re royalty. Helpers, y’all. They are all over America, seen and unseen. Try and make them feel seen.

Ever since I was a child growing up along the South Texas-Mexico border, I have turned to books. They were my comfort and solace. They showed me that the world was so much bigger than my own exposures. It is no wonder, then, that in adulthood I turn to writers to help me think through the biggest challenges facing America.

I want to read the words of people much smarter than I. I want to let their work penetrate my mind and course through the maze of my own thinking, infiltrating it with their wisdom. American writers—and by this, I mean journalists and essayists and novelists and poets—explain the nuances of American life to me. I trust them like they’re my kin. The sharper the words, the more I trust them.

Give me a memoir about someone growing up wildly different than I did. Give me an article investigating a story the public needs to know. Give me an essay exploring the complexities of current events. Give me a column dissecting the intricacies of a pop culture debate. Give me a novel to lose myself into. Give me a poem that will lift my spirits.

Give me writers in America. Always.

Sometimes our souls need a reboot. If you are a thinking person in America, you will inevitably need to be uplifted. May I suggest you set foot outdoors? I say this as a non-outdoorsy person. Go and explore this country we live in that has gotten far too good at disappointing us.

I’ve been in many American cities and towns and there is always beauty to be found. A park or a river or a forest or a beach or a museum or a sculpture or a perfect, unobstructed sunset.

Put yourself in the way of beauty, wrote the writer Cheryl Strayed. Do it over and over. Let America take your breath away.