What is the value of literature in influencing social change?

: What is the value of literature in influencing social change?
What is the value of literature in influencing social change? How have inequality and oppression been represented in literature? Has literature helped to produce a more just society? Should it?

Any example or reference can be used, but we just read Trifles by Susan Glaspell.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Model Pilot
Many books have had impact in many social areas. “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair caused a furor and led to regulation of the food production industries. “Silent Spring” fired people up about DDT and protecting the environment. “The Grapes of Wrath” affected many in terms of responding to the Great Depression and afterward. Sometimes the “literature” is a report, like “Nation At Risk” that set of a wave of school reform efforts in the 1980’s and 90’s and is still resounding today (and not necessarily based on facts or good ideas.) “Black Like Me” and others exposed the equality issues of the 50’s and 60’s. “To Kill A Mockingbird” hit on legal discrimination and is a classic. Mark Twain addressed a lot of it in “Huckleberry Finn” in a style fitting for that time. But literature is not a “monolithic” structure…Playboy Magazine is also a piece of literature, and some screeds have made things worse or have tried to do so. Literature can influence as well as reflect a society, if it is allowed to do so by being “free” of control by powerful interests.