I sat in my childhood bedroom, breezing through the pages of yet another random dystopian novel that BookTok recommended. I was reading yet another of those books to try to get through the droning COVID-19 quarantine, when my mother barged into my room.
“¡Graciela! ¿No has considerado leerte los libros de The Hunger Games?” she asked excitedly. I had been asking my family for book recommendations the day prior.
My mom has been an avid Hunger Games fan for as long as I can remember. While I made my family sit through all eight Harry Potter movies after I finished reading each book in the fourth grade, my mom was being consumed by The Hunger Games series. She had recommended the books to me once when I was in sixth grade, but after reading the first page of the series’ first installment, I resigned from the task of finishing the rest.
I don’t know what my aversion to The Hunger Games stemmed from. Perhaps I viewed the series as too mature for my age, even if its target audience is 11 to 13 year olds. But by the time I reached age 16 and had still not read The Hunger Games, this fact kind of made me feel like a fake reader.
So, when my mom recommended The Hunger Games again, I felt I had no choice but to read them. At the very least, I was painfully bored and desperately needed a new set of books to entertain myself.
My mom didn’t have physical copies of the books and, at the time, I was opposed to reading on my Kindle. I thus resorted to pleading with my dad to let me buy physical copies of the books, even just the first one. He agreed. My parents almost always buy me books when I ask. I have come to understand that they consider it an investment toward my intellectual development and mental health.
Once I had the three Hunger Games books in my hands, I dove in. I planned to read each book and, once I finished it, watch its respective movie. Before I began reading the books, I never could have anticipated the effect they were about to have on me.
I started with the first book, “The Hunger Games.” Contrary to when I first tried reading the book in the sixth grade, I was hooked from the moment I read the first page. Suzanne Collins employed such specificity and imagination in her world-building that I began to imagine myself as part of one of the Panem’s districts.
The characters felt so real to me. Say what you want about Katniss Everdeen, but I related immensely to her emotional suppression. She clearly experienced many tough emotions since the first pages, but hid most of these in an attempt to protect both her mother and her sister. At the point where I was in my life, crying or outwardly expressing any emotion was an activity reserved for the confines of my bedroom. Even though I am more emotional and expressive now, I related to Katniss at the time, and her character helped me understand myself.
Once I read the book and saw the first movie bring the world of Panem and The Hunger Games to life, there was no going back. I needed to know more. I quickly went from one book and movie to the next, picking up “Catching Fire,” arguably my favorite installment of the series with an especially interesting plot twist, and then “Mockingjay,” a heartbreaking series finale.
After I finished all three books and four movies, I was emotionally attached to The Hunger Games. I don’t think I’d cried as hard or as much as I did in about a year before I read and watched the series. The pages of my Hunger Games copies are full of dry tear stains. I have too many videos of me bawling my eyes out hidden in my Snapchat “My Eyes Only” folder because of movie scenes that hit close to home. I had not thought that a fictional world could have such a real effect on me.
The morning after I finished “Mockingjay,” I woke up at 7 a.m. to get ready for online school. As I put on my school uniform and set up my computer to begin my day, my eyes wouldn’t stop watering. I heard my mom moving around in the kitchen, so I decided to spend some time with her and tell her that I’d finished the series the night before. The second I walked into the kitchen, I fell into my mom’s arms and cried on her shoulder for a solid 20 minutes.
As I reflect on that morning, I don’t think I was crying over the events of the series. While I did love all the characters and the all-consuming story that Collins brought to life, there are only so many tears I can shed over people I don’t know and places I have never been. I was crying about something else. But only The Hunger Games books could catalyze this emotional reaction in me after months of being physically unable to express what I was feeling and going through.
The Hunger Games taught me how to feel again, and for that I’ll forever be thankful.
Daily Arts Writer Graciela Batlle Cestero can be reached at gbatllec@umich.edu.