Using+Contemporary+Realistic+Fiction+to+Understand+People

How might one use contemporary realistic fiction to understand people (consider what makes people unique or different)?
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This genre is about people and events that are not real but that could be. The experiences of the author, either personal or researched, illustrate a life other than our own. When we see that life from the viewpoint of the imagined people living it, we gain a greater understanding of what it is to be that way. I have never looked at another person and wondered if he viewed me differently because of my color. I learned about that feeling from Brendan Buckley’s Universe by Sundee Frazier.

Understanding has an emotional aspect to it that cannot be conveyed with information alone. Reading dry descriptions of a place or culture may help us to gain knowledge but it does not help us to understand. I know that in Hindu culture some parents still arrange marriages for their children. By reading Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan, I understand that when this happens with a young teenage girl there is a sense of helplessness and fear that accompanies it.

After students have read a contemporary realistic fiction book, they can be assigned an exercise to imagine how they might have felt and/or reacted in the same situations as the main characters as the book. They could write an imaginary diary for one of the characters or host a tv show and interview one of them. In order to complete this exercise the students would need to understand how it is to be the character(s).