Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Stories We Must Tell: Ugandan Children And The Atrocities Of The Lord's Resistance Army, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is about stories--the stories that we are told and the stories that we, in turn, tell to others. It has become a truism that we have lost our faith in master narratives and that the "real" is composed of many competing narratives, all fragmentary, contradictory, overlapping. In this article, the author discusses the problems this view poses for those of us who see ourselves as advocates and activists rather than solely--or primarily--as scholars, but who nonetheless seek to combine social activism with intellectual rigor and honesty. In particular, she discusses the dilemmas this creates for the human rights …