Ode to Hermione

I grew up in a domestic culture that contained very little selective censorship. The only real qualm I remember either parent raising about a certain art media was when my father declared that he'd rather us watch Mulan than the quintessential Disney princess movies because the Chinese warrior portrayed a much more empowering role model for young women. That being said, I was a voracious reader of Harry Potter books, and so were all my friends.

In fact, it wasn't until after I came to know the Lord as a 12-year-old that I had any real idea of the fact that parents were forbidding their children to read these stories on account of religious grounds. This, however, had nothing to do with me or my friends as we stood in line to grasp the newest Harry volume from the shelves of the nearest Barnes & Noble at the stroke of midnight. We had no idea of the war that was being waged on the "moral" front between parents and children, we only knew how the text affected us personally, and that was to plant in us a deep-rooted obsession with education.

I read the first book as a second-grader, and was immediately enthralled with the life of a Hogwarts student. Unlike the halls of my own elementary school, where I was laughed at for being in the advanced reading group, and scolded by my teacher for writing a creative story that was yards and yards of lined paper taped together instead of a single page, Hogwarts students were encouraged to learn freely and study broadly in the subjects that most interested them.

Obviously, the character I most identified with and learned from was that of Hermione Granger. Her emergence as a role model in my life meant that while my friends were chasing boys on the playground, I was running away from them to go read or invent an elaborate game of my own imagining with my closest friends. Her brassy and unashamed persona as a young scholar and a female convinced me that I would be no less bright and outgoing, and in later years that would become one of the most valuable things in my life.

I never have, and never will, understand what concerned parents call the "danger" of reading Harry Potter books, but I can say confidently that young women everywhere who decide to read these books are in great danger of intellectual confidence and liberation. And I'm okay with that.