The Voice of Witness Reader: Ten Years of Amplifying Unheard Voices

Voice of Witness · Dave Eggers

Mrt. 2023 · Haymarket Books

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Since 2005, Voice of Witness has illuminated contemporary human rights crises through its oral history book series. Founded by Dave Eggers, Lola Vollen, and Mimi Lok, Voice of Witness amplifies the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice.

Voice of Witness’s work is driven by the transformative power of the story, and by a strong belief that social justice cannot be achieved without deep listening and learning from those marginalized by systems of oppression.

This selection of narratives from the organization’s first ten years includes stories from occupied Palestine, Sudan, Chicago public housing, and the US carceral system, among many others. Together, they form an astonishing record of human rights issues in the early twenty-first century; a testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of incredible odds; and an opportunity to better understand the world we live in through connection and a participatory vision of history.

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We regret that the interviewers, translators, and assistant editors who contributed to the narratives featured in the Voice of Witness Reader could not be individually credited in the book. For various reasons, narrator security being chief among them, we generally refrain from identifying interviewers and editors in connection with specific narratives.

For future editions, we look forward to including an acknowledgements page that lists all of our contributors over the years, and to providing greater insight into their role in creating these books. In the meantime, we invite you to visit our volunteer network page. These incredible individuals have, collectively, contributed thousands of hours to Voice of Witness book projects, and their work is essential to each step of the process—from research and interviewing to editing, transcription, and translation.

We give special thanks to all of our volunteer interviewers and assistant editors around the world, who have conducted hundreds of oral histories over the years, and who have helped shape these into compelling, powerful narratives that honor the experiences of our narrators and inspire empathy and dialogue among our readers. We are truly grateful for their dedication and generosity.