Crystal Parikh

Edited by Crystal Parikh

Literature has been essential to shaping the notions of human personhood, good life, moral responsibility, and forms of freedom that have been central to human rights law, discourse, and politics. The literary study of human rights has also recently generated innovative and timely perspectives on the history, meaning, and scope of human rights.

The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights and Literature introduces this new and exciting field of study in the humanities. It explores the historical and institutional contexts, theoretical concepts, genres, and methods that literature and human rights share. Equally accessible to beginners in the field and more advanced researches, this Companion emphasizes both the literary and interdisciplinary dimensions of human rights and the humanities.

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“Writing Human Rights: The Political Imaginaries of Writers of Color”
by Crystal Parikh

order via University of Minnesota Press or Amazon

In this ambitious study, Crystal Parikh shows how the literature of writers of color has always been preoccupied with what are now called “human rights.” Her wide-ranging and urgent readings, written with the precision and care of a passionate literary and social critic, reminds us of how much literature matters in imagining and demanding justice and humanity.
— Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Refugees” and “The Sympathizer”