Introduction to The Right to Her Story collection

Editor’s Note: Several years ago, StoryCenter’s Silence Speaks initiative released The Right to Her Story, a collection of women’s human rights stories from around the world. These powerful stories are accompanied by a discussion guide, developed in collaboration with the Human Rights Center at the School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Following is the introduction to this guide, shared in recognition of this year's "16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence" campaign. View our "16 Days of Women's Rights Stories."

By Alexa Koenig, Executive Director, Human Rights Center

Human rights are, at their core, about caring—caring about other human beings, caring enough to mitigate and account for suffering, and caring enough to create legal remedies to cruelties that too commonly occur.

To actualize the Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948 in the wake of World War II, and its aspirational promise that the world community will defend human lives against abuse, we need to ensure that people care. But how do we make this happen?

People do not empathize with issues or causes. They empathize with other people. This is why, as James Dawes points out, “…human rights work is, at its heart, a matter of storytelling.” [i] ­One of the most powerful ways to further human rights is by sharing the stories of human lives—to help people identify with others, better recognize the iniquities and cruelties of the world, and become motivated to interrupt the beliefs and structural disparities that contribute to abuse.

The Right to Her Story DVD and guide offer a powerful opportunity to educate and motivate the next generation of human rights champions. Engaging with these stories and activities is a means for expressing and acknowledging previously silenced narratives, not only to honor the storytellers, but also to draw others into the struggle to protect human rights.

As human rights educators and advocates, our collective goal is, of course, to eradicate abuse. At a bare minimum, our intention is to stem the tide of cruelty as it flows across desperate terrain. If indeed the pen is mightier than the sword, then sharing stories is perhaps our best hope for ensuring the triumph of human rights over human evil.

Storytellers are on the frontline of this struggle. They make themselves vulnerable in order to spotlight the worst aspects of humanity—the parts that perpetrators stifle in the shadows—and to illuminate what’s possible. Perhaps most cogently explained by Chinua Achebe in Anthills of the Savannah, “Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control. They frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit.” [ii] Even those who have experienced the worst of mankind can often regain some measure of control with the stories they later tell, in terms of what they say, how they say it, and who is called to listen.

My own research into the experiences of men who were formerly detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, underscores the ways in which storytelling offers the marginalized one of the most precious tools at their disposal: their voice. Detainees’ stories of resistance represent a struggle that demands to be heard and a lifeline to the social contact all people crave. Brief film clips from their interviews help viewers recognize that these individuals, all of whom were eventually found not guilty of the terrorist acts of which they were originally accused, are not monsters, but men.

Today, digital technologies like these allows us to pair words with images, giving us tremendous promise for reaching across time and space to move human hearts and offering the possibility of greater impact than the printed page. Paul Zak, Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, points out that videos are better at “sustaining attention and causing empathic transportation” [iii] than words alone.

And yet, as authors Melanie and Steve Tem warns us, while stories (whether in print or video form) “show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceivable,” they also have the power to trivialize. These authors continue, “Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false.” [iv] This is why it is critical to give storytelling the time and care and thought it deserves, especially when it comes to stories that take tremendous courage to tell and to hear.

Feminists have long pointed out that history is replete with the stories of great men. What history—even modern history—is often missing is the voices of women. Their stories are critical not only because the world needs to better understand the “truth” behind human rights violations as experienced by all who are affected (the outward impact), but also because the act of telling can be crucial to the survival and well-being of the teller.

StoryCenter’s Silence Speaks program has seen in the participatory media workshops it leads around the world that storytelling can be a step towards healing, or at least a way to process what one has experienced, especially when the telling is witnessed by compassionate others in a safe environment. As Trinh T. Minh-ha so eloquently wrote, “The story depends upon every one of us to come into being. It needs us all, needs our remembering, understanding, and creating what we have heard together to keep on coming into being.” [v]

Silence Speaks is committed to upholding these values—each of the stories included as part of The Right to Her Story DVD and guide came into being with deliberate attention to protecting the safety and dignity of storyteller, above all. These powerful narratives communicate real-life stories that transcend time and place and inspire all of us to become champions of human rights.

Looking for more information about StoryCenter's work on gender-based violence and human rights? Find project updates on our Silence Speaks Facebook page.

i Dawes, James (2009) "Human Rights in Literary Studies," Human Rights Quarterly. Vol. 31, No. 2.

ii Achebe, Chinua (1987). Anthills of the Savannah. New York: Anchor Books.

iii Zak, Paul (2013). “How Stories Change the Brain,” published on the web site of the University of California, Berkeley, Greater Good Science Center.

iv Tem, Melanie and Steve (20013). The Man on the Ceiling (Discoveries). Hertford: Crossroad Press.

v Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1989) Woman, Native, Other. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.