#ScribesAndMakers 25 July 2025
Create a multiple choices poll listing 3 books you personally consider “classics” and ask others to choose the ones they have read. Create a fourth option for None of the Above.

#BramStoker #StephenKing #HarperLee #Carrie #Dracula #ToKillAMockingbird #reading #Lesen #bookstodon

Milestone: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

On this day, July 11, in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was published—quietly, powerfully, and with the resonance of a moral bell tolling through American literary history. It was Harper Lee’s only novel for decades, but it became one of the most important works of the 20th century.

”You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Atticus Finch

It’s not a perfect book. No novel can bear the burden of every societal expectation. But what makes To Kill a Mockingbird remarkable is its ability to enter the classroom, the living room, the courtroom of public opinion—and stay. It brought words like empathy, injustice, prejudice, and conscience into the daily lexicon of readers young and old. Through the eyes of a child, it asked: What does it mean to do the right thing when the world around you insists you’re wrong?

It’s often said that literature is a mirror held up to society. If that’s true, then To Kill a Mockingbird is also a magnifying glass—highlighting both the ugliness and dignity that coexisted in the American South during the 1930s, and indeed, in many corners of society still today. The story of Atticus Finch, Scout, and Tom Robinson has become a lightning rod—because it demands that we confront our understanding of justice, race, and moral courage.

Why Reread This Book?

Rereading To Kill a Mockingbird is not just an act of literary return; it’s an exercise in moral reflection. We reread to remember what it meant—and to ask what it means now.

Because empathy must be practised.
Because history continues to echo.
Because each reading reveals something new—not only about the book, but about ourselves.

Quiet Books, Quiet Change

While To Kill a Mockingbird confronted society with its courtroom drama and stark racial injustice, other books have quietly shifted the ground beneath our feet:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: A quiet, resilient voice of a young girl navigating poverty, education, and hope in early 20th-century America.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: Bold, lyrical, and rooted in personal healing, it transformed the landscape of African American women’s voices.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson: A spiritual meditation on grace, forgiveness, and human decency in a divided world.

The Chosen by Chaim Potok: A tender exploration of faith, difference, and understanding across generational lines.

Each of these works may not have incited public confrontation, but they cultivated compassion, reshaped assumptions, and invited slow, lasting change.

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy… That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Miss Maudie

My Takeaways

Literature holds the power to awaken empathy and challenge systems—not always with noise, but sometimes with quiet conviction.

Books become cultural landmarks when they ask hard questions and invite us to grow beyond our present understanding.

To Kill a Mockingbird endures because it invites a moral reckoning—not just with society, but with ourselves.

Until next time, happy reading and warmest thoughts from my corner to yours.

Rebecca

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience”

Atticus Finch

#bookReview #bookReviews #books #FictionSalon #HarperLee #HistoricalFiction #Milestone #Reading #ToKillAMockingbird

🗓️ Efeméride: 11 de julio de 1960.

📜 Harper Lee publica "Matar a un ruiseñor", novela que denuncia el racismo en Estados Unidos y se convierte en un clásico de la literatura universal. La obra inspiró a generaciones en la defensa de los derechos civiles.

#Efeméride #HarperLee #Literatura #DerechosCiviles #Historia #EEUU #SigloXX #Novelas