I fell in love with reading when I was quite young. I loved feeling the texture of the paper between my fingers as I would prepare to turn the page; I loved the emotions invoked by various arrangements of 26 printed letters; I loved the way that entire lives could be pressed in between two slices of cardboard.

But it wasn’t until my freshman year that I knew that reading could be important.

When I first laid eyes on To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I thought I was going to hate it. It was one of those standard-issue novels that was passed around in Mrs. Franck’s eighth period freshman English class. The ugly brown cover was adorned with a simple portrait of the Finch’s southern home and plain black text. You’d be hard-pressed to find a book cover with less character.

All I knew about this novel was that it was a classic. I also knew that I hated classics. Most 14-year-olds do.

I cracked the tome open with nervous disdain. Little did I know, I was about to embark upon a journey of a lifetime.

As a white, middle-class, small-town girl, I knew little of racial and socioeconomic inequality. I knew they existed, but I never saw them in action. I grew up in a comfortable bubble of ignorance. I guess you could say I’m like Scout that way.

From the very beginning, Scout, Jem and Dill’s antics charmed me. The troupe reminded me of my own childhood adventures, which drew me in. Lee’s expertise with words hypnotized me. It was just like everything else I had read up until that point: frivolous fun.

Suddenly, Tom Robinson entered the scenery and changed everything for me.

A court case centered around a poor, white woman’s accusation of rape by a black man presented all kinds of moral issues that I had never seen in my homogeneously middle-class Caucasian community. Playground fights over the SpaceMaker bookmark black market were more my speed.

But here I was, forced into finding my ethical footing in an unfamiliar landscape. Up until this point, almost every issue I had been presented with was split into two sides: right and wrong; good and evil. I always knew where I stood.

I stood with the familiar.

I was blessed to grow up in a safe neighborhood with a supportive family. I grew up with privileges that I undervalued. I knew that my parents, teachers and role models were always on the side of good. They would never choose something that would exploit someone else--right?

Wrong.

It’s not that my community is full of bad people. It’s not. It’s full of people who are looking out for their lifestyle and their own well-being. It was my own version of Maycomb.

Luckily for me, To Kill a Mockingbird was my Tom Robinson moment. It educated me on issues that I never knew existed--kind of like Atticus and Cal counseling Scout at the beginning of the adventure. But it was more than that: To Kill a Mockingbird was a call to action. After reading Lee’s artistry, I could no longer ignore the inequalities in our society. We are often unkind to those who are unlike us because their differences intimidate us--but people like Harper Lee are unafraid to show us how wrong we are.

She shook the nation with her words. In To Kill a Mockingbird, she challenged us to think for ourselves instead of trusting our peers’ judgments. And later, in Go Set a Watchman, she taught us to question even our most reliable role models. Harper Lee inspired a generation not only to defend the truth like Atticus, but also to search for the truth like Scout.