Subtitle: Women's Writing on Human Rights
Editor: Marjorie Agosin
Foreword by:Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Subject: Human Rights/Gender Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2625-6
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2626-4
Pages: 395 pp.
Description: An International Literary Anthology

"In a powerful collection of narratives, commentaries, essays and poems, women writers (some familiar, many unknown) address the crucial issues in human rights around the world. Agosin, a professor at Wellesley who was recently awarded the U.N. Leadership Award for Human Rights, links six themed sections: War and Remembrance, Imprisonment and Censorship, Childhood, Exiles and Refugees, Domestic and Political Violence, and Resistance and Refusal….The voices of these strong women remind us that seeing with the heart and acting from conviction can be forces for change. This collection takes the adage 'think locally, act globally' in a new and vital direction."--Kliatt

"In 77 narratives, commentaries, essays and poems, women writers address the timely issue of women's human rights. . . . More than an earnest sampler of atrocities and defiance, the book attests to the power of the words as an effective weapon in the fight for social and political rights. In Agosín's words, 'to write under adversity is to actively resist pain and betrayal, but it is also a form of denying horror.'"-Publishers Weekly

"Women throughout time have been victimized because of their sex, but have nonetheless shared an ability to articulate the experience with eloquence, turning pain to song and shaping an instinct for survival. What we write out of such experience is indeed a map of hope. . . . This anthology contains writing that seduces, pulls the reader to unimaginable depths, and then, more often than not, transcends those depths and empowers."-The Women's Review of Books

"Agosín has cast her net wide, garnering the work of many influential activists and writers, including Sheila Cassidy, Christa Wolf, Aung San Suu Kyi, Joyce Sikakane, Isabel Allende and Adrienne Rich. . . . A Map of Hope provides a sobering reminder of the persistence of evil, and a moving and authoritative record of women's contribution to the ongoing struggle for 'equal and inalienable rights.'"-Times Literary Supplement

"Agosín, herself a permanent exile and activist poet, has uncovered a rich vein of hope in the slag heap of geography, and has sounded a deep humanity in the silence of history's brutal inhumanity. . . . If ever there were a book of voices to sing out the last days of our century and a hopeful cartography to guide us into the new millennium, it is this illuminated map for the ages."-The Texas Observer

More than half a century after the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, women throughout the world 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 have spoken out about human rights.

Women writers, young and old, known and unknown, explore the dimensions of terror, the atrocities of war, and the possibilities of resistance and refusal in poems, essays, memoirs, and brief histories. 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 justice, harmony, and equality can be achieved.

Marjorie Agosín, an award-winning poet and human rights activists, presents here a global body of writings that transcends national boundaries and ethnic identities. These are the voices of those who have decided to stand up against cruelty and injustice in order to appeal to the 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 volume are Anna Akhmatova, Claribel Alegría, Isabel Allende, Sheila Cassidy, Nadal el Sa'adawi, Anne Frank, Nadine Gordimer, Hattie Gossett, Eva Hoffman, Barbara Kingsolver, Adrienne Rich, Nelly Sachs, 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.

Marjorie Agosín was recently honored with the United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights. A professor of Spanish at Wellesley College, she has authored many books, among them An Absence of Shadow, Ashes of Revolt: Essays on Human Right, Melodious Woman, Always from Somewhere Else, My Jewish Fathers, and Dear Anne Frank.