More than half a century after the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights, women throughout the wrold still struggle for social and political justice. Many fight back with the only tools of resistance they possess-words. A map of hope presents a collection of 77 extraordinary literary works documenting the ways women writers hace spoken out about human rights.
Women writers, young and old, know and unknown, explore the dimensions of terror, the atrocities of war, and the posibilities of resistance and refusal in poems, essays, memoirs and brief stories. The frequently graphic descriptions of the horrors of war prison camps, exile as well as political and domestic violence are counterbalanced with expressions of hope and confidence that a world of justince, harmony and equality can be achieved.
Marjorie Agosín, and award-winning poet and human rights-activist, presents here a global body of writings transcending national boundaries and ethnic identities. These are the voices of those who have decided to stand up against cruelty and injustice by appealingto conscience of the world. Most of all, however, the writers in this volume put a human face on the profoundly dehumanizing experience of suffering and deprivation, especially as it affects innocent noncombatant women and children.
Among the writers represented in this volumen are Anna Akhmatova, Claribel Alegría, Isabel Allende, Sheila Cassidy, Nadal el Saadawi, Anne Frank, Nadine Gordimer, Hattie Gosset, Eva Hoffman, Barbara Kingslover, Adrienne Rich, Nelly Sachs and Aung San Suu Kye.
This publication has been supported in part by Amnesty International, with a percentage of the profits to benefit Amnesty International USA.
