Click here to learn more about Nowhere to be Home, Voice of Witness’ collection of oral histories from Burma and the diaspora.

In New York:

February 7th, 2012: Join Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman for a discussion of Inside This Place, Not of It, at Columbia University. Click here for details.

February 8th, 2012: Join Robin Levi, Ayelet Waldman, and Inside This Place, Not of It narrator Francesca Salavieri for a reading and talk at NYU. Click here for details.

In California:

February 13th, 2012: Join Peter Orner (editor of Voice of Witness titles Underground America and Hope Deferred) in conversation with Peter Godwin (The Fear) for a discussion of life and struggle in Zimbabwe at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Click here for details. Use the promotional code “VOW” for a discounted ticket!

Click here to download a copy of this resource today.

Interested in learning more about teaching with Patriot Acts or another Voice of Witness title? Just contact our Education Program Director Cliff Mayotte (cliff.mayotte @ voiceofwitness.com) for information on lesson plans, curricula support, trainings and more.

In The Nation, Alia tells the story of Shukri Abu-Baker, imprisoned in the highly secretive Communication Management Unit (CMU) in Terre Haute, Indiana, with severe limits on communication with his family.  Click here to read the full article.

In The Christian Science Monitor, Malek denounces the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of terrorism. The Act was signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. Click here to read the full article.

Also in the news, Patriot Acts narrator Talat Hamdani was featured on the New York Times website on the first day of the year. In Patriot Acts, Talat tells the moving story of her son’s death in the collapse of the Twin Towers and the suspicion with which he was sought by the police in the following months. Click here to read Talat’s full narrative, excerpted on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency before the title was published.

For more information on Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice or to purchase the book, please visit the McSweeney’s website here.

“Hope Deferred might be the most important publication to have come out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years.” – Alexandra Fuller, Harper’s Magazine

“[The Fear is] a document that should be read by anyone interested in the sacrifices that people are willing to make for the sake of democracy.” – The New York Times

Event details:
Monday, February 13 at 7 pm
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California St.
Members $17 | Public $20 | Student $10

For more information about the event, click here.

The review included an interview with Robin Levi, who says, “I wanted people to see who these women are that we’re putting inside. When people see them and hear their voices, they’ll ask—are we safer because they’re inside? Are our communities safer? What are we solving  my doing this? These women deserve more from us and we deserve more as a community and as a society.”

Click here to read the full review.

Robin Levi is co-editor of the newest title by Voice of Witness, Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons. For more information on Inside This Place or to purchase the book, click here.

Last summer, Kristen Levine, a teacher at San Domenico High School in San Anselmo, CA, taught an oral history lesson at Uganda Rural Development Training Girls School in Uganda. Here, Levine shares her experience teaching with the Voice of Witness title Patriot Acts in Uganda.

URDT Girls School (URDT) is a boarding school for 240 girls in the Kibaale district of Uganda near the Rwandan border, devoted to addressing the problem of girls dropping out of school due to pregnancy, early marriage, and gender inequality and poverty. In 2008, my daughter Sydney raised nearly $14,000 for two huge greenhouses for the school and in the summer of 2011, she and I went to see the greenhouses in action.

Of course, I also intended to go to URDT wearing my teacher “hat” (in addition to being a supportive mom), and wondered what I could “do” with the school. When I heard about the June 2011 Voice of Witness teacher training [‘Amplifying Unheard Voices’], I knew that this was how I could be of service. I signed up for the training, I purchased a few Flip Cameras, and when I reached Kagadi, Janet Myahunge, the head teacher, asked me to conduct a workshop for her staff of about twenty-five on gathering oral histories. Together and out loud, we read Adama Bah’s story from Patriot Acts. Many of the people in the room had lived through the tumultuous events in Uganda’s recent history. They truly appreciate the idea of telling history from the bottom up, rather than from the top down—it speaks to their mission of empowering young women. They nodded knowingly when I spoke of listening and amplifying those stories that are untold and ignored. The teachers and administrators at the school will use their new oral history skills to document the stories of their families and the students.

The school also has a radio station, which is how much of information in rural Uganda is disseminated. They are considering using oral history with their radio station—now that is amplifying voices!

In Summer 2012, I am returning to Kagadi, Uganda for a 10-day service-learning immersion trip with our Biology teacher, Hilary Staples and seven San Domenico students. The students, who are starting service-learning projects, will use Voice of Witness materials and training to interview the people with whom they are working. We will partner with the students and teachers to gather oral histories and to capture the success stories of the students and their families. We will also work with the educators, the people in the village, and talk to the families with children who are not sending their girls to URDT—to compare what happens when a girl is educated.

Levine has also been using Voice of Witness curricula in her classroom in California

This year, students will be reading excerpts from Underground America, and Voices from the Storm. For summer reading my Social Justice students read Zeitoun—and they were very surprised that [this type of civil rights abuse] was going on in “our” country. In one written reflection, student Olivia Ayanruoh, a Junior, (who also will be going to Uganda) said, “Zeitoun showed me that not everything projected in the media is true.”

Many thanks to Kristen for sharing her inspiring story!

Have you used Voice of Witness books in teaching or advocacy work? We’d love to hear from you. Just send an email to letters [at] voiceofwitness.com.

This type of work would not be possible without the continued support of readers just like you. To support Voice of Witness with a year-end gift, just click here.