I have always been a prolific rereader of books. Between the ages of eight and eleven, I read the Percy Jackson series more times than I could count. As I’ve gotten older and entered young adulthood, there are two books in particular I’ve returned to several times to help guide my path forward: East of Eden by John Steinbeck and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Every time I return to these books, I have changed, and so my experience of reading them offers me something new.
1. East of Eden; John Steinbeck
East of Eden is a book about everything. In 600 pages, it follows three generations of two different families, loosely retells the Biblical stories of Cain and Abel and Adam and Eve, and addresses hot topics from the 1950s such as prostitution, industrialization, and the tribulations of lettuce farming. Somehow, despite its epic scope, East of Eden is also a book about me. I don’t have any brothers, let alone any brothers representative of Biblical figures, yet I would argue that anyone with a family will find East of Eden relatable to some degree.
The weight of a family history is a heavy one. To exist in a family is to be influenced by people you’ve never met, whose names you might not even know, and whose faces you may not recognize if they passed you in the street. Yet East of Eden reminds us that even Cain (and his 20th-century Northern California equivalent in this novel, Caleb Trask)—who killed his own brother and was cast out from his family—was given the free choice to respond to his family and his own actions, to define his life and create a better future for himself.
Every time that I wonder if I am doomed because of things beyond my control, I return to East of Eden so Steinbeck can remind me of my potential and free will.
I discovered East of Eden shortly after learning a great deal about members of my family whom I had never met. The new stories I was being told about my family made me wonder if I was doomed to repeat the same dysfunctional patterns as previous generations of my family had. In East of Eden, although Caleb Trask’s mother—who is representative of both Eve and the Devil in the novel’s allegorical logic—abandoned him shortly after birth and was not present to raise him, he is afraid that having her blood in him has somehow corrupted him. My fears were very similar. Every time that I wonder if I am doomed because of things beyond my control, I return to East of Eden so Steinbeck can remind me of my potential and free will. No matter what I am worried about, I can find my fears and how to triumph over them in the pages of this novel.
2. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; Gabrielle Zevin
I first read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow when I was a senior in high school. Though I would have been affronted if you said this to me at the time, I was a child. This novel is concerned primarily with art, childhood friends, and how the two intersect. It explores how creative products are often made with an audience in mind, and usually, that audience is the people we love and have loved for years. When I returned to this novel in college and reflected on the hometown friendships I sustained, I understood the depths of my gratitude for the people who have stayed in my life no matter how much land or water separates us. I think especially of my friend Lauren.
The first time I read this novel, I was still attending the same high school as Lauren. She was the first person I shared my creative writing with as a sophomore in high school and quickly became my biggest fan. When we lived twenty minutes away from one another, I didn’t have to think about how our relationship would change when we went to separate colleges: I to UVA, she to Duke. In the back of my mind, I worried that we would drift apart and that our friendship only existed because we were bound by proximity. I worried that she didn’t actually like me or my writing and only put up with me because there weren’t many other girls for her to hang out with at our computer science magnet high school.
Yet even today, as Lauren studies abroad in Japan and is thirteen hours ahead of me, we still talk regularly. She still asks me to share my writing and remembers what I’m talking about when I text her out of the blue about characters I created when I was fourteen years old.
Through writing, I have created new worlds when I was dissatisfied with my current one.
I reread Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow a year into college and again shortly before my third year of college. Every time I read it, I think of Lauren. Even though the main mode of art this novel is concerned with is video games—how they can both offer the promise of renewal and hope for the future and ground us in our cherished past memories—I believe my writing has had the same capacity for me. Through writing, I have created new worlds when I was dissatisfied with my current one. I am so endlessly grateful that I have had Lauren to share these worlds with. Whenever I write anything, she is in the back of my mind, cheering me on and waiting eagerly to read it.
The books that I’ve read again and again remind me of the different lives I have lived and the people I have loved. They ground me in the history of those who have come before me and inspire me to create my own future. No matter what I bring to a reread of my favorite books, I finish as a better, more hopeful, version of myself.
