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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 13, 2011)
11 Street roots May 13, 2011 il À /ELj Tales of humanity, sometimes joyous, sometimes harrowing BY JOE MARTIN C O N TR IBU TIN G W RITER n her splendid historical work “A World Made New,” Mary Ann Glendon expatiates on the painstaking efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt and a multinational cadre of intellectuals, politicians and philosophers to weave a visionary charter that comprehensively details human rights v relevant to all people. An extraordinary achievement, the Üniversal Declaration of Human Rights became a reality in the wake of tiie horror of the World War II. “Today, the Declaration is the single most important reference point for cross-national discussions of how to order our future together on our increasingly conflict-ridden and interdependent planet. But time and forgetfulness are taking their toll. Even within the international human rights movement, the Declaration has come to be treated mòre like a monument to be venerated from a distance than a living document to be reappropriated by each generation. Rarely, in fact, has a text been praised yet so little read or understood.” To celebrate the promise embodied in . the Declaration, the United Kingdom’s is a boy who hopes to go to school. His Amnesty International has brought together father tells him he will be enrolled but first 37 superb short stories by-writers from he must work in order to raise tuition. In around the world in a volume entitled “Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal actuality Sando has beep sold into slavery. He becomes a powerless cipher. “Sando Declaration of Human Rights.” Joyce Carol worked all day and every day, and was Oates and Wèlter Mosley are well-known unofficially allowed only two free days in a while others like. Hector Aguilar Camin and year: the day of the Feast of Ramadan and Banana Yoshimoto will be new to many. An air of menace, terror and helpiessness the day of the Feast of Sacrifice, the two major Muslim holidays. And only on those permeates à number of these tales. Individuals are subjected to the brute will of days was he left in relative peace.” Eventually three local boys subject Sando to an arrogant political order. Incarceration, a violent humiliation. isolation and beatings are applied in often An offering by M arina Lewycka titled murky or absurd circumstances. A character “Business Philosophy” portrays a slimy ' bears these’riolations and mustdiscover an peddler in human flesh. “Look at it from my inner strength in order to endure. point of view—it’s not easy trying to make In Helen Dunmore’s “Where I Keep My an honest living in these parts, but my Faith,” an imprisoned woman opines: “l am business philosophy is to give my customers not the material of which martyrs are made. what they want. And what they want is girls. I have always known this. The others say Nice, willing, pretty girls.” Sometimes a they are the same. It’s just that we took a step, and then another step, and these steps young female is not so pliant. A male employee administers discipline: “Like I brought us here. But in fact it’s not possible said, no one sets out to hurt the girlies to count the steps. And you can’t take them deliberately,' but Branko’s a big lad and I back again, because in order to do that you sometimes think he doesn’t know his own would have to unmake everything. I would strength, so she ended up with a couple of have to become a woman with ten toenails fractured ribs and a few broken bones in her and ripe, moist skin and hair the color of feet, nothing that wouldn’t mend with a bit earth after heavy räin has fallen on i t ” of re s t” The pimp expresses fury over one Article 4 of the Universal Déclaration young woman’s escape to the safety of a states clearly. “Nò one shall be held in . women’s refuge. slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave David Mitchell’s piece “Character trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Development” takes place in Iraq. Some Yet in our time slavery is thriving. The British soldiers are conducting a rough heart-wrenching conte by Mohammed interrogation of an Iraqi doctor. A pistol that Naseehu Ali, “The Long Ride Back Home,” is a profound evocation of this reality. Sando supposedly contains blanks actually has a I Freedom WwSWBBiiagjiss b # Hum»« frights Âmsestf Internatimi Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights By Amnesty International USA, Broadway, Paperback, 2009, 414 pages, $16 RÉUTERSZMOLLY RILEY live round. The doctor is shot and killed. A young British soldier who witnesses the gory event is instructed to understand that the doctor “left the base alive and well and cheerful at 16:00 hours after helping us establish the facts.” Told implicitly to shut up about the incident, he is then sent home immediately on leave. The incident haunts the soldier. Before his murder the doctor had invoked and started to recite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Back home and drinking with his brother, the soldier reveals something to his sibling: “Looked up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Learned it all by heart, I did. Want to hear it?” “The War on Women” by Kate Atkinson limns the swift imposition of misogynistic policies designed to transform women into chattel. The tale oozes an Orwellian creepiness. Liana Badr’s “March of the' Dinosaurs” portrays the tension accompanying the sudden incursion of Israeli solders into a besieged Palestinian neighborhood: “Thefr helmets erased any trace of the humanity a person might hope to see from their rock-like faces.” These and other short literary gems in this fine collection are an opportunity to become acquainted with an array of writers whom the reader may be encountering for . the first time. It is a rewarding and worthwhile endeavor. Originally published by Real Changes News, Seattle, Wash. A woman chants during a rally held by Amnesty International in front o f the Egyptian Embassy
