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There is so much worthwhile literature regarding human rights. This page highlights choice books which
Group 151 recommends.
A LONG WAY GONE - By Ismael Beah
A gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back.
There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in
more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story
in his own words.
In A LONG WAY GONE, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve,
he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by
the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released
by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians,
who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope. http://www.alongwaygone.com/
Amnesty Member Adam Stone has written a fictional human rights novel - Xamon Song. Xamon Song introduces readers
to two young soldiers, Eddie and Mike, from the nation of Carbonia. They are lifelong best friends and frustrated musicians
who find themselves half a world away from home, conducting reconnaissance patrols deep in the forests of a tiny country called
Xamon. The two friends are increasingly disillusioned, afraid their military service is no longer to the people of Carbonia,
but to the profit statements of SangreDenar, a corporation from Carbonia with large logging interests
in Xamon. Readers are also introduced to Digna Giraldo Cardona, a human rights activist from Xamon City who is drawn
to the forests to investigate persistent rumors of human rights abuses by paramilitary mercenaries linked to SangreDenar.
Digna is determined to see for herself what is happening in the most remote, and dangerous, part of her country. This
is the world of Xamon Song, a view from the ground of the meeting of cultures, of the human costs of corporate malfeasance
and governmental collusion. The result is a novel that is alarming and unforgettable - achingly
human, disturbingly real.
The author of Xamon Song has personally contacted us to describe his book and
intentions. Please click here to read Mr. Stone's email.
More than 250,000 children have fought in three dozen conflicts around the world, but growing
exploitation of children in war is staggering and little known. From the "little bees" of Colombia to the "baby brigades"
of Sri Lanka, the subject of child soldiers is changing the face of terrorism. For the last seven years, Jimmie Briggs has
been talking to, writing about, and researching the plight of these young combatants. The horrific stories of these children,
dramatically told in their own voices, reveal the devastating consequences of this global tragedy. Cogent, passionate, impeccably
researched, and compellingly told, Innocents Lost is the fullest, most personal and powerful examination yet of the
lives of child soldiers.
The Bookseller of Kabul
Asne Seierstad (non-fiction)
The author is invited by the bookseller, Sultan Khan, to live with his family, so she can write the family's story. The story happens in recent times, from the the time just before, during and after the Taliban. The book is interesting to read, and helps understand the women's place in the Muslim country Afghanistan.
Acts
of Faith
Philip Caputo (Fiction)
The lives of human rights workers in Sudan are followed as their ambitioins to help get confused
with personal goals and passions. A deeply enthralling novel
that does not whitewash either the difficulty of the job nor the people who take it on.
Pomegranate Soup
Marsha Mehran (Fiction)
Three Iranian women resettle themselves into a new life in a small Irish village. Each is,
however, still affected by the violence they left behind. Overall an uplifting and lightharded book deeply entwined with Iranian
food and recipes.
The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living
Courtney Angela Brkic (Memoir)
Focuses on the horrific events of the former Yugoslavia Brkic
is a first generation Croat-American..she worked in Bosnia with Physicians for Human Rights (as an archeologist) and later
with the UN International War Crimes Tribunal
The Key to My Neighbor's House
Elizabeth Neuffer (non fiction)
Examining competing notions of justice in Bosnia
and Rwanda, award-winning Boston Globe correspondent Elizabeth Neuffer convinces readers that crimes against humanity
cannot be resolved by talk of forgiveness, or through the more common recourse to forgetfulness.
Sarajevo Self Portrait: The View From Inside
Leslie Fratkin (photography)
The purpose of
this project is to show an authentic view of a country at war, from a new, more intimate perspective—to show what this
war looks like through the eyes of those living inside it.
Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know
Roy Gutman and David Rieff (collection - nonfiction)
Co-authorRoy Gutman won the Pulitzer for breaking
the story (for Newsday) on Yugoslavian death camps. Before his expose, it was widely guessed but never documented...until
he got inside
A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
Samantha Power (nonfiction)
In her Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Samantha Power reminds us that .
. . the United States has consistently failed to exert its considerable leadership on the world stage to halt genocide
Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America
Stacy Sullivan (nonfiction)
The remarkable story of how a small group of young men started a guerrilla army
that lured the world’s most powerful military alliance into fighting a war and changed the course of history in the
Balkans forever
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Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography
of an Iragi Village
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (non-fiction)
The author was recently married when she moved to Iraq with
her husband; a sociologist, he was studying the culture there and,
the women being kept so separate from the men, he asked her to keep a
journal of her experiences there. This book is the result. The time is
the 1950's when the country was ruled as a large number of small sheikdoms.
The result is a wonderfully readable story; you'll get lots of insight
into women's place in the society there and other aspects, like the history
of the rift between the Sunni and Shi'a
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi (non-fiction)
This
non-fiction journalesque book recounts the gradual reduction of women's freedom through the discussion of great English language
novels in a woman's book club. The author is eloquent and perceptive
Persepolis and Persepolis 2
Marjane Satrapi (non-fiction)
These
graphic novels recount the artis/author's childhood as liberties were curtailed in her homeland. The second book presents
her life after she leaves Iran for education in Europe and how the cultural transition brought unexpected challenges.
I Didn't Do It for
You: How the World Betrayed a Small African
Nation
Michela Wrong (non-fiction)
The devastating but important story
about the little known nation of Eritrea and the way international power politics can play havoc with a country's destiny,
Petals of Blood
Ngugi wa Thiongo from Kenya (fiction)
A novel about a dictatorship that keeps alcohol cheap so the population will stay docile
Remember Ruben
Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness
Mongo Beti Cameroon (fiction)
Two novels about dictatorship and disappearances.
Imagining Argentina
Lawrence Thornton (fiction)
A playwright has visions of people who disappeared under the Argentine military dictatorship of the 1970s.
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number
Jacobo Timerman (non-fiction)
The experiences of one of the few people who disappeared in Argentina and actually survived.
The
Long Night of White Chickens
Francisco Goldman (fiction)
A Guatemalan-American returns to Guatemala in search of his family’s former maid who has disappeared after getting involved
in politics
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