The following questions help to put written material in a human rights perspective. Included are formal literature (e.g., poetry, fiction, non-fiction); educational texts (e.g., textbooks, manuals); media (e.g., print, electronic images, magazines, films, television); advertising (e.g., jingles, slogans), and commercial publications (e.g., promotional literature, pamphlets, logos, slogans).

PART A: Questions

1. What human rights themes appear in this work?

• What rights are enjoyed?
  
  
• Are human rights in conflict?
  
  
• Are human rights denied? Who is responsible for this human rights abuse?
  
  
• Who acts to defend human rights? How? Why?
  
  
• Who does not act to defend human rights? Why not?
  
  
• What specific articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) are involved?

2. If human rights are defended in this work, what action is taken?

• Does the act of defending a human right itself violate someone’s human rights?
  
  
• Is the action effective?
  
  
• Is the action violent? Could a non-violent response have been possible?
  
  
• How might the outcome have been different if a different kind of action had been taken?
  
  
• Will the action make a long-term change in individual lives? In society?

3. What does this work say about human dignity?

• In what ways is human dignity affirmed? Undermined?
  
  
• Does any character especially embody human dignity?

4. What does this work say about individual responsibility for human rights? About the relationship between rights and responsibility?

5. What role do the following factors play in this work, especially as a means to bring about transformation:

• compassion?
  
  
• consensus?
  
  
• being able to express oneself?
  
  
• silence?
  
  
• collaboration with the perpetrator(s) or victimizer(s)?
  
  
• collaboration with the defender(s) of rights?
  
  
• having access to information and/or education?
  
  
• understanding of and/or empathy with people with different values or ways of life?

6. Does this work contrast the needs of the individual with the needs of the majority and/or society?

• What does this work say about the relationship between the individual and society? The individual and the state?

7. Are there similar human right issues in your country? your community? your neighborhood? your school or classroom?

• What rights are enjoyed?
  
  
• What rights are in conflict?
  
  
• What rights do you feel need protection?
  
  
• What specific articles of the UDHR are involved?

8. How can you act to defend rights in your community?

• To whom would you speak? What would you say?
  
  
• What kinds of actions would be effective and appropriate? Which would not?
  
  
• Is such action already being taken?
  
  
• Is it possible to form alliances to address these problems? With whom?
  
  
• See Part IV, Taking Action for Human Rights, for more on community advocacy.

PART B: Suggestions for Activities

1. Research one of the authors. Are there particular events, people, or places that may have shaped their opinions on human rights?

2. Have a film discussion group.

Source: Nancy Flowers, Human Rights Educators’ Network, Amnesty International USA

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A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS LITERATURE

POETRY

Anna Akmatova	"Requiem"
W.H. Auden	"The Unknown Citizen"
Dennis Brutus	"Cold," "Letters to Martha
Nina Cassian	"They Cut Me in Two"
Ariel Dorfman	"Hope"
Nazim Hikmet	"From a Man in Solitary"
Phillip Lopate	"Solidarity with Mozambique"
James Sheville	"Confidential Data on the Loyalty Investigation of Herbert Ashenfoot"

NOVELS

Isabella Allende	The House of the Spirits
Mulk Raj Anan	Untouchable
Manlio Argueta	One Day of Life
Margaret Atwood	The Handmaid’s Tale
Ray Bradbury	Fahrenheit 451
Anthony Burgess	A Clockwork Orange
J.M. Coztzee	Waiting for the Barbarians
Joseph Conrad	Nostromo
Ariel Dorfman	My House Is on Fire
Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man
Nawal El Saadawi	God Dies by the Nile
Louise Erdrich	Tracks
Eduardo Galeano	Memory of Fire Trilogy
Gangopadhyay	Arjun
Nadine Gordimer	July’s People
Jessica Hagedorn	Dogeaters
Bessie Head	When Rain Clouds Gather
Aldous Huxley	Brave New World
Franz Kafka	The Trial
Joy Kogawa	Obasan
Arthur Koestler	Darkness at Noon
Bernard Malamud	The Fixer
Toni Morrison	Beloved
Bharati Mukerjee	Jasmine
George Orwell	Animal Farm
George Orwell	1984
Alexander Solzhenitsyn	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
John Steinbeck	The Grapes of Wrath
Mildred Taylor	Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Lawrence Thornton	Imagining Argentina
Vasilis Vassilikos	Z
Richard Wright	Native Son
Emile Zola	Germinal

PLAYS

Jean Annouilh	Antigone
Bertholt Brecht	Galileo
Andre Brink	A Dry White Season
Arthur Miller	The Crucible
Sophocles	Antigone

BIOGRAPHY AND NON-FICTION

Maya Angelou	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Nien Ching	Life and Death in Shanghai
J.D. Criddle	To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family
Carolina Maria De Jesus	Child of the Dark
Vaclav Havel	Letters to Olga
Arthur Koestler	Spanish Testament
Nelson Mandela	Long Walk to Freedom
Rigoberta Menchu	I, Rigoberta Menchu
Pablo Neruda	Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: "Toward the Splendid City"
George Orwell	Selected Essays
Alicia Partnoy	The Little School
Irina Ratushinskaya	Grey is the Color of Hope
Moylda Szymuciak	The Stones Cry Out, A Cambodian Childhood, 1975-1980
Jacob Timerman	Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number
Elie Wiesel	Night
Harry Wu	Bitter Wind
Malcolm X	The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: See "Teaching Human Rights through Literature," in Amnesty International USA’s Human Rights Education Resource Notebook Series for an extensive annotated list of literature for teaching human rights.