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  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781583229170
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 80
  • RRP: $22.99

Overcoming Speechlessness



In 2006, Alice Walker, working with Women for Women International, visited Rwanda and the eastern Congo to witness the aftermath of the genocide in Kigali. Invited by Code Pink, an antiwar group working to end the Iraq War, Walker traveled to Palestine/Israel three years later to view the devastation on the Gaza Strip. Here is her testimony.
Bearing witness to the depravity and cruelty, she presents the stories of the individuals who crossed her path and shared their tales of suffering and courage. Part of what has happened to human beings over the last century, she believes, is that we have been rendered speechless by unusually barbaric behavior that devalues human life. We have no words to describe what we witness. Self-imposed silence has slowed our response to the plight of those who most need us, often women and children, but also men of conscience who resist evil but are outnumbered by those around them who have fallen victim to a belief in weapons, male or ethnic dominance, and greed.

  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781583229170
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 80
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Alice Walker

Alice Walker is the author of seven novels including The Color Purple, which won the Pultizer Prize, The Temple of My Familiar, Meridian, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Now is the Time to Open Your Heart; three collections of short stories, In Love & Trouble, You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down, The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart; and eight volumes of poetry including, Once, Revolutionary Petunias, Good Night Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning, Horses Makes A Landscape Look More Beautiful, and Her Blue Body Everything We Know. She lives in Northern California.

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