New in the Library: Voice of Witness Series

In our media-saturated world of the twenty-first century, where so many things clamor for the public's fractured attention and for a place on the agenda, some voices are lost. Some of them lack the resources and abilities to compete in the information marketplace or are simply drowned out by the trivial noise of entertainment and vacant commercialism. Some voices are actively suppressed by more powerful interests. Who decides what stories we do get to hear? And then how do we decide what we listen to? What are the effects of such silencing and ignorance for our understanding of the practice of justice and power in the world?

Engaging with such questions, and others even more basic to our humanity, is Voice of Witness. Founded by author Dave Eggers and human rights scholar Lola Vollen, Voice of Witness is an ongoing nonprofit series of books that collects the firsthand accounts of men and women affected by contemporary human rights abuses and social injustice in the USA and around the world. The scope of the project involves numerous editors, translators, historians, activists, academics, novelists, and volunteers who have undertaken to render interviews with these individuals into story. They are books where the dispossessed are given space for their own words.

In doing so, the books provide a perspective on complex situations unique from what can be found in the immediate reports of journalism, the dry facts of statistics, or the brief testaments of social media. It is a perspective from within crisis and out of the voices of the people whose lives have been the most seriously disrupted, whose humanity has been the most severely violated. They are people in failed states beset by violence and brutal outrages of power, such as Sudan, Burma, and Zimbabwe. They are people subjected to the failures of states, namely the United States in the series so far, with books focusing on the wrongly incarcerated, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the precarious existence of undocumented immigrants, and the governmental overreach of the War on Terror. A constant theme is that these are men and women who have been displaced – from their homes and communities, from the lives they thought they would and should have. The displacement comes from violence, from social barriers, from absurd systems of laws, from the petty self-interest of the powerful, and from the suspension of rationality. It leads to terror, victimization, exploitation, and even enslavement.

Their stories are not delivered simply as accounts of victimhood to be pitied, however. They do depict lives circumscribed by anxiety, where people are forced to make difficult choices and take precarious risks. They are accounts that necessarily focus on the habits and strategies of perception needed to survive in these worlds on the edges of the world we live in. But they are not limited to these things. The storytellers have stories of full individual lives, and the makers of these books want you to know them. For in so doing, they hope to present the greatest challenges possible. As author Brian Chikwava writes in the forward to Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives, “The disconnect between the stories told by a state and those told by its citizens at best obscures the moral choices that must be made, and some states may well prefer it that way.” The stories cannot hope to represent the full experience of a population who has suffered, but they do not need to in order to raise complicating questions.

Voice of Witness includes in its mission statement this goal of raising awareness, and much can be learned from the books. The editors do not pretend, though, that all will be well if we listen, these being stories about the world. Another recurring theme of the collections is how the act of storytelling is in itself an empowering and humanizing one for these storytellers who have been abused and ignored. Through that act, they can reclaim their individuality and their human dignity against those who would deny their voices. It is the chance to locate lives displaced. Through their stories, they tell themselves back into the world.

The following books from the series were kindly donated to the library by Voice of Witness, where they are available for check out. Learn more about Voice of Witness, the project, and the books at www.voiceofwitness.org.


Lola Vollen & Dave Eggers, eds. Surviving justice: America's wrongfully convicted and exonerated. (2008)

Lola Vollen & Chris Ying, eds. Voices from the storm: The people of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. (2008)

Peter Orner, ed. Underground America: Narratives of undocumented lives. (2008)

Peter Orner & Sandra Hernández, eds. En las sombras de Estados Unidos: Narraciones de inmigrantes indocumentados. (2009)

Craig Walzer, ed. Out of Exile: Narratives from the abducted and displaced people of Sudan. (2009)

Peter Orner & Annie Holms, eds. Hope deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean lives. (2010)

Maggie Lemere & Zoë West. Nowhere to be home: Narratives from survivors of Burma's military regime. (2011)

Alia Malek, ed. Patriot acts: Narratives of post-9/11 injustice. (2010)

Subject Guide: Momentum 2009

With Tides' Momentum 2009 conference around the corner (September 7-9), here are some books related to this year's plenary themes: Power, Capital, Carbon, Work, Rights, Conflict, and Connections. Filled with innovative ideas, inspiration, and trenchant analysis, they are just the thing to help you prepare for the conference or to help you stay informed on policy, progressive politics, and social justice.

Piven, Frances Fox, Lorraine Carol Minnite, and Margaret Groarke. Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters. New York: New Press, 2009.

The authors of this book examine the history of the powerful tendencies toward voter suppression in America's two-party political system, focusing on Republican Party and conservative movement efforts over the past twenty-five years to counter the mobilization of black voters. Where the obstacles to voting used to be obvious, today they are more subtle, using tactics such as felon disenfranchisement statues, burdensome voter identification laws, and tough rules on voter registration drives, all in the name of “election reform.” Finding such suppression alive and well in the 2008 election, they demonstrate the need today for an electoral process that is fair, simple, and transparent.

McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. New York: Times Books, 2007.

Are you local? The familiar, prevailing economic model that has held growth to be the primary goal is currently leading to increased inequality, insecurity, environmental degradation, unhappiness, and social isolation. McKibben presents the stories of pioneers pursuing alternatives based on local interdependence and the sustainable use of resources. It is an argument for a more humane economic approach based on rebuilding and reinvigorating local communities, thereby directly connecting people to other people and to the consequences of their actions.

Goodell, Jeff. Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future. Boston: Mariner Book, Houghton Mifflin Co, 2007.

Roughly half of the electricity in America comes from coal, with the average American being responsible for consuming twenty pounds of the stuff a day, yet many are unaware of its centrality to our existence or the enormous influence the coal industry has on our politics and economy. Goodell traces the life cycle of this cheap, dirty, and carbon-intensive fossil fuel from deep underground, into the power grids, through the halls of government, and out into the atmosphere, revealing the costs and consequences of this addiction to the environment and to the health of individuals, families and communities.

Nahmias, Rick. The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

Poor, exploited, and marginalized, migrant farm workers are a vital part of California's and the country's agriculture economy. Rick Nahmias' photography documents the lives of these workers, showing the harsh conditions in which they are forced to live and work, but also reflecting their essential human dignity. In combination with oral histories and analytic essays, this collection tells the story of the struggle for respect and justice, and puts a human face on the hidden costs of feeding America.

Levy, Barry S., and Victor W. Sidel. Social Injustice and Public Health. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

This wide-ranging collection represents a comprehensive approach to understanding the adverse impacts of social injustice on public health, examining its effects on different population groups and in different areas of health including infectious diseases, mental health, nutrition, and assaultive violence. It is also a call to action, presenting ways to respond to the root causes of social injustice and to ensure that all people have the increased opportunity to meet their basic human needs through access to medical knowledge, tools, and resources.

Glenny, Misha. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld. New York: Knopf Books, 2008.

The chaos left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union in conjunction with the opportunistic deregulation of international financial markets brought with them the dramatic growth of transnational organized crime and the global shadow economy, which now accounts for an estimated twenty percent of world GDP. Chronicling the rise and activities of this globalized underworld, including the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, Japanese yakuza, and Chinese labor smugglers, Glenny presents a detailed picture of how they feed off of the vulnerability of the poor to satisfy the material demands of the affluent in the West, creating a breeding ground for violence and insecurity.

Hamm, Theodore. The New Blue Media: How Michael Moore, MoveOn.Org, Jon Stewart and Company Are Transforming Progressive Politics. New York: New Press, 2008.

Including the Onion, Air America, Michael Moore, MoveOn, Daily Kos and the Blogosphere, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, this book chronicles the history of today's progressive media in America with a particular focus on their growth during the Bush years. Examining their use of satire, didactics, activism, and new technologies, Hamm argues that despite a mixed record of success they have changed the presentation and direction of contemporary progressive politics, with Stephen Colbert providing “the most sophisticated critique mustered by the New Blue Media.”