Testimony : : Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone / / Shanee Stepakoff.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• VerfasserIn: Stepakoff, Shanee,
• MitwirkendeR: Cole, Ernest D.,
• Place / Publishing House: Lewisburg, PA : : Bucknell University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: The Griot Project Book Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (110 p.)

Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives. Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world. This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry” can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Notes on the Text -- Testimony -- Introduction: -- The Amputee’s Mother -- The Child Soldier -- The Grieving Father -- The Rape Survivor -- The Blinded Farmer -- The Widower -- The Gravedigger -- The Beggar -- The Victim of War -- Further Resources -- Acknowledgments