By C. White on October 21, 2015
Book titled, Confronting Global Gender Justice: Women’s Lives, Human Rights includes “Marjorie Agosin’s poetics of memory: human rights, feminism, and literary forms” by Pérez and “Digital storytelling for gender justice: exploring the challenges of participation and the limits of polyvocality” by Hill. I recommend these readings, especially for anyone interested in female human rights advocacy. Both authors creatively use different, multicultural techniques to promote emotional relief to abuse victims, witnesses, and the readers or viewers of their work.
So why should you or anyone else care about their different techniques to address human rights creatively? You may wonder why you or anyone should bother looking at their work? Well, trust me, you will gain more perseverance, determination, and stress-relief from reading how they use traumatic experiences creatively. But I must advise that they have contrasting creative techniques to advocate for female human rights.
With Agosin, she uses poetry to expose social injustice in Latin America, by intersecting multidimensional domains with ethics, ethnicity, multi-voices, spirituality, humanitarianism, and ethics. Her narration is based upon fictional autobiographies on traumatic events. She advocates for awareness of the brutal, dictatorial, Pinochet regime (1973-1989) and her work gives “unofficial truths” to promote memory recollection, social injustice for the abused and missing females who disappeared, and accountability, through her visions, imaginations, distortions of facts, false reality, and metaphors. She uses her poetry to spiritually connect to the missing victims, their living relatives, and traumas from the brutal, Pinochet regime. Her Latin American culture may be confusing to some people, especially those unfamiliar with cultural norms and values involving the supernatural realm, magic, and the practice of spiritual human channeling of other people. Different countries, norms, and religions do not condone spiritual human channeling, and in the United States (US), only a margin of citizens currently practice the act. The act was also illegal in the US and West Europe, especially between the 17th and 19th century.
On the other hand, Silence Speaks is an ethnographic, digital storytelling, that allows ordinary people internationally, who were victims or witnesses to social injustice, to share their personal accounts. These “citizen journalists” use short video clips to address the address historical life experiences and their culture, from the interception of communication, teaching, and engagement in oral history. Viewers simultaneously are able to address their own conflicts, which directly promotes their inner-healings. I actually found this to be more enjoyable, less depressing, and more beneficial to the victims and short story viewers. I like how the short video clips contribute to the inner-healings of the traumatic victims and those who view their accounts. Therefore, readers and viewers are able to benefit from these creative, female human rights advocacy pieces, or share them with those who would.
Many people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and I believe relaxation and creativity promotes and facilitates inner-relief, although complete inner-healing will never occur. Agosin’s poetries seems more enjoyable to those who share her Latin American culture. But Silence Speak is understandable to those familiar with the US culture because the internet channel, YouTube, is similar to Silence Speak and it is viewed regularly, worldwide. I have replaced television channels with short narrative clips on YouTube years ago, and experience great comfort and inner-relief from all kinds of unwanted stress on a regular basis. YouTube is very popular because it connects viewers with the narrators and stories, identical to Silence Speaks. So although I never watched Silence Speaks before, I know firsthand of its great effectiveness, based upon reading about Hill’s creative, female human rights advocacy technique.