The Library that raised me

Before I knew how to make sense of the world on my own, I learned it through the spines of books. Our house wasn’t just a home—it was an archive. Books lined every room, stacked on shelves, piled on side tables, perched in corners. Encyclopedias stood like solemn guardians in the hallway, their pages holding answers to questions I hadn’t even learned to ask yet. I remember the sheer, visceral urgency I felt to join that silent conversation. Before I could properly read, I would trace the letters with my fingers, desperate to decode the magic that held my family so captive. In the car, I’d painstakingly sound out every street sign, every billboard, every passing truck logo—a tiny, relentless commentator that must have driven my family to distraction. But I had to. I had a mission.

You see, in our house of voracious readers, every story came with a chorus of interpretations. My parents, my brothers, even my grandma Chichi—each would read to me, or recount a tale, through the unique lens of their own life. Chichi’s voice, warm and weathered, spun fairytales into family legends. A dragon in my father’s version was a force of nature; in my mother’s, a tragic hero; in Chichi’s, it was almost always a metaphor about someone from the old country. I was surrounded by narratives, but I was lost in translation. I was tired of being the only one who couldn’t consult the original text. I refused to be the sole alphabet in a house full of novels.

So I read. I read everything they talked about. That eager, aching need to belong to the literary dialogue became my syllabus. I started with Little Women, finding a sisterhood in the March family that echoed my own. I fell completely into the starlit melancholy of The Little Prince—it remains my favorite, a guide to the heart’s invisible truths.

I charged through the swashbuckling adventures of The Three Musketeers, puzzled over the noble madness of Don Quixote, and, by second grade, was cautiously navigating the dense, poetic forests of Shakespeare. If it was on a shelf or in a conversation, it became my quarry. I was building my own lexicon, not just of words, but of the worlds my family lived in when they were reading. What I realize now, with the gentle clarity of hindsight, is that my neurodiversity was a silent, shaping presence in all of this. Long before any diagnosis, my family had instinctively built the perfect ecosystem for my mind to thrive. That relentless drive to read every related text, to master the canon of our household, wasn’t just curiosity—it was the early fingerprint of a brain that seeks patterns, completion, and depth. The way I could hyperfocus for hours, lost between the pages of The Little Prince while the real world faded away, wasn’t me being “quiet”—it was my neurology finding its most natural state. The overwhelm I sometimes felt in noisy rooms could always be steadied by the weight of a book in my hands. Without knowing the why, they provided the how. They never pathologized my intensity; they fed it. They never shushed my endless, looping questions about the stories; they’d just smile and find another book that might hold the clue. Chichi would patiently listen to me dissect the logic of a fairy tale, her eyes soft with encouragement, never dismissing it as “too much.” Our chaotic library was a non-linear, sensory-rich universe where my particular way of moving through the world—obsessive, detail-oriented, seeking connection through subject—wasn’t just allowed, it was quietly honored. That book-filled world taught me more than literacy. It taught me that there are infinite ways to interpret a life. It taught me that my neurodiversity, though unnamed, was not a barrier to that understanding but often its conduit. My deep focus was the engine that powered my journey from Little Women to Shakespeare. My need for context was the compass that led me through every book my family loved. It was the proof that a different kind of mind could find its language, its belonging, and its strength—not in spite of its depths, but because of them. Our library was my first classroom, my sanctuary, and the quiet, steadfast proof that my family—Chichi included—was preparing me for a world of depth and complexity. They did it simply by sharing the one they lived in, page by patient page, trusting that I would find my way through the chapters, just as I was.