got it in one. i know people who never finished high school who love james joyce and i know people with master's degrees who think shakespeare is "inaccessible." it is entirely a question of whether you think it's okay not to "get" everything you read the first time around
if you think you need to fully "get" every book when you read it then it will be very hard for you to step outside your literary comfort zone. much more productive, i think, to view the first reading as the start of a conversation, and to teach it that way too
white americans and my anti-genocide friends, read this 28-page pamphlet by Jewish researchers summarizing how many countries have been repressed by Israeli regime and how Israel exists not as some romantic "homeland" but as a military industry that exports White Fascism globally