Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims

Telling Stories to Change the World is a powerful collection of essays about community-based and interest-based projects where storytelling is used as a strategy for speaking out for justice. Contributors from locations across the globe--including Uganda, Darfur, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, New Orleans, and Chicago--describe grassroots projects in which communities use narrative as a way of exploring what a more just society might look like and what civic engagement means. These compelling accounts of resistance, hope, and vision showcase the power of the storytelling form to generate critique and collective action. Together, these projects demonstrate the contemporary power of stories to stimulate engagement, active citizenship, the pride of identity, and the humility of human connectedness.

Rickie Solinger is a historian and curator, author of books including Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America and Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade.

Madeline Fox is an educator and researcher currently pursuing her PhD in Social Personality Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Kayhan Irani is a community arts practitioner who in 2007 was awarded a certificate of recognition by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg for her arts work in immigrant communities.