Literature and the imaginations of others

Abstract

I cannot talk about why I teach, before I talk about why I read. As a child I lived what was a very narrow and circumscribed life in the middle of middle-class Sliema. My opportunities to meet different people were limited, though thankfully my father worked at the government farm in għammieri and that gave me the opportunity to be enchanted by the difference around me. This fascination with others and the desire to escape the narrow world I lived in led me to books, which despite the rather anti-intellectual culture of my immediate family, I was fortunate enough to have found. My favourite read every time I was ill, and this even in adulthood, remains Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott. In it I could find not simply what I desired or wished to be (the character Jo), but new knowledge, ideas and feelings. [Excerpt]