ABSTRACT
Race is placed in the United States. Places and spaces are racialized. The realities that the social construction of race comprises spatial elements and that the production of American space and place is often racialized is not news to college students, though the opportunity to explore these realities is often radically new. The relationship between reading literary fiction and empathy has been proven and theorized about, though not fully explained. In several studies conducted in the last few years, reading fictional literature specifically – results were tested against subjects reading popular fiction and nonfiction – has been shown to increase empathic and prosocial behavior. Michel Laguerre's Minoritized Space: An Inquiry into the Spatial Order of Things serves to illuminate the validity and purpose of reading literature in relation to an inquiry into the interrelated and co-constitutive realities and constructs of race, place, space, and displacement.
