Speaking Out

Writer and activist Rose Styron on the role of art in politics
Rose Styron is a poet, journalist, and human rights activist. She has published three volumes of poetry and has written articles on human rights and foreign policy. Currently, she is leading a study group at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and was recently interviewed by the HPR.
Harvard Political Review: Your study group at Harvard is entitled “The Influence of Writers and Other Artists on Human Rights & Public Policy.” What happens when these two worlds intersect?
Rose Styron: I have met people who, through their speaking, writing, visual art, or music, stood up for what they believed, have spoken out and taken the consequences. … I felt so privileged to know them and to understand a bit of the psychology of when they were either underground or in political prisons. Sometimes they quoted poetry to each other, or whatever they remembered of their fiction writing, or of great speeches that they had read. … I was both mesmerized and humbled and understood that it was possible to make the world a better place even if you were a poet.
HPR: In what way can the arts, both visual and written, influence public opinion or, as you said, “make the world a better place?”
RS: I remember how emotional my reaction was to the amateur paintings on the walls all over Belfast during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. There were murals and scenes of both violence and peace and the arousal of passions on both sides. It brought the community together and let them express themselves in art rather than violence. I feel that that’s one of the uses of art of all kinds. Music arouses us. Paintings and graphic art arouse us. I know how moved we and people across and around the world are when writers who use the language in excellent ways highlight and illustrate the social ills and social causes of their day. They’re dealing with history and its lessons, with social and political issues as seen through characters who can change the way people feel. It may not lead to a march on Washington right away, but it influences people to get there.
HPR: In 1970, you joined the founding group of Amnesty International USA, and now it’s almost 40 years later. Was there an exact moment when you decided to make such a large commitment to addressing the issue?
RS: The first moment was when I was in the Soviet Union at an Afro-Asian writers’ conference in 1968. I actually joined a protest movement of Danny the Red who had been at the barricades in early May 1968 in Paris, and had come to Frankfurt to protest what he felt was the oppression of President [Leopold Sédar] Senghor of Senegal who was a poet as well as a president. … I snuck out to join the protest movement and then found that we had to leave within the hour to go to the airport to take the once-a-week Aeroflot plane to Moscow. [Russia] had just invaded Czechoslovakia. We protested and got some of the other writers to protest. We were all sent to Tashkent where nobody could hear us, and we were with each other and not under great surveillance. We walked around the shrines and markets of Tashkent and talked to each other. … I was so moved by all these dissidents there who told me about their experiences and gave me their manuscripts to bring back to the United States to be translated. That was the moment at which I realized I had to do something. I went to Washington; they paid no attention to me. I went to New York and joined Amnesty International. … I became part of that very first group and decided that poetry could wait and that this was what I was going to do.
HPR: What are the most pressing human rights issues facing us today?
RS: I see a lot of things as human rights issues, even stem cell research and poverty and environmental destruction, as well as persistent unjust imprisonment, torture, and exile. I’m still concerned with both the people involved in and those who have trauma from being part of practices, [in issues] like child soldiers, genital mutilation, and gender discrimination.