How Storytelling Expand Our Perspectives

When my family and I moved to Tangerang in 2022, it was a big shift for us. Back in Bandung, we lived near a main road, side to side with a salon and restaurant. Here, it’s different. We have a close-knit neighbourhood where kids play outside every day.

For my daughter, this was both exciting and challenging. She had more friends to play with but also had to learn how to compete.

She had a hard time riding a bike and was still stuck on a tricycle while her friends were already speeding around on two wheels. She felt embarrassed for not being as good as them and refused to practice in front of them. She didn’t want anyone to see her struggle.

We reassured her that it was okay and that learning takes time. But still, she held back.

One day, my friend gave her a book: Raoul Taburin Keeps a Secret. And that book changed everything.

The book is about a boy who couldn’t ride a bike no matter how hard he tried. But he had a gift—he understood bicycles better than anyone and became the best bike mechanic in town. In fact, there was even a bike race named after him. Yet, he kept one big secret: he still couldn’t ride a bike.

As I read the book to my daughter, I saw something change in her. She connected with Raoul. For the first time, she realized she wasn’t alone in her struggle. She also started to realize that just because she wasn’t good at one thing didn’t mean she wasn’t good at anything. She had her own strengths too.

And just like that, Raoul Taburin Keeps a Secret became her favourite book. She asked me to read it every night. And little by little, she started finding the confidence to practice riding again.

I remember that there’s a quote that says, “We read books because we can never meet enough people.”

At just five years old, my daughter’s world was still small. She had no way of knowing that someone else, somewhere, had also struggled with the same thing. But through a simple story, she did.

I think storytelling—whether books, films, or even spoken stories—is a powerful way to expand our perspectives.

Reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas made me feel the fear and confusion of a child in Auschwitz. Orang-Orang Oetimu helped me imagine what it was like for the people of East Nusa Tenggara to feel ‘occupied’ by soldiers. And Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk painted a vivid picture of poverty in Indonesia, where survival meant eating tempe bongkrek, a risky fermented coconut dish.

In many ways, fiction feels more real than non-fiction because it lets us experience things beyond our own reality. Books transport us into someone else’s mind, even if only for a moment, helping us see through their eyes and understand their struggles. And that’s how we learn empathy.

This is why reading fiction is essential, even if you write non-fiction such as annual reports, articles, or corporate social media captions, for a living. It’s one of the few ways we can truly step into another person’s shoes, making your writing sharper, more relatable, and more human.

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Nia Janiar

Lead Writer at B/NDL Studios. These days, she’s choosing matcha over coffee for her daily dose of caffeine.