Sustained Reading Research Articles

Positive impact of an inpatient early childhood literacy programme on literacy practices and family experience in a paediatric heart centre.

CHD predisposes children to neurodevelopmental delays. Frequent, prolonged hospitalisations during infancy prevent children with heart disease from participating in recommended language and cognitive development programmes, such as outpatient early childhood literacy programmes, and contribute to caregiver stress, a risk factor for adverse developmental outcomes. This study aims to describe the implementation of a single-centre inpatient early childhood literacy programme for hospitalised infants with heart disease and assess its impact on reading practices and patient-family hospital experience. Admitted infants ≤1 year old receive books, a calendar to track reading frequency, and reading guidance at regular intervals. Voluntary feedback is solicited from caregivers using an anonymous, QR-code survey on books. A prospective survey also assessed programme impact on hospital experience. From February 2021 to November 2023, the Books@Heart programme provided 1,293 books to families of 840 infants, of whom 110 voluntarily submitted feedback. Caregivers reported a significant improvement in access to books (p < 0.001) and increased reading frequency after learning about Books@Heart (p = 0.003), with the proportion reading to their child daily increasing from 27% to 62%. Among 40 prospective survey responses, caregivers reported feeling a sense of personal fulfillment (60%), self-confidence (30%), connection (98%), and personal well-being (40%) while reading to their child. An inpatient early childhood literacy programme is a well-received intervention for infants with heart disease that promotes development, improves book access, increases reading exposure, and engages families. Further studies are needed to assess its impact on sustained reading practices and neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Reading Difficulties of Grade 4 Learners in the Post-Pandemic

The post-pandemic era exacerbated the reading difficulties of learners due to disrupted learning, limited access to resources, and potential gaps in foundational skills. Along this premise, this study analyzed the level of reading difficulties of Grade 4 learners in the post-pandemic. Data needed for the descriptive study was collected from 155 respondents using a self–made 40–item questionnaire that passed the rigorous tests of validity and reliability. Across areas of concern, the level of reading difficulties of Grade 4 learners was found to be moderate. Further, a significant difference was found in respondents’ reading difficulties in word decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary when grouped according to parents’ educational attainment, family income, and number of siblings. However, no significant difference was found in groupings by fluency and sex. These findings call for technical assistance and workshops for teachers to equip them with techniques and strategies in teaching reading and creating a sustainable reading program that will capacitate and strengthen learners’ motivation towards reading, aiming to improve their skills in word decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. Keywords: Language education, reading difficulties, word decoding and fluency, reading comprehension and vocabulary, Negros Occidental, Philippines

The First World War, Madness, and Reading between the Lines of The Marsden Case

The Marsden Case, Ford’s first published novel after the First World War, has received relatively little critical attention. This paper aims to redress the balance by offering a sustained reading which illustrates how the context of the First World War interacts with a major theme in Ford’s oeuvre, madness. It follows Ford’s maxim that the novel was a place for inquiry and illustrates how Ford’s narrator explores the questions of who succumbs to madness and why. It highlights a debate at work in the novel on the role of talk in creating or curing nervous breakdowns. The novel’s opacity is part of a challenge to the wisdom of directly confronting or revisiting painful experiences, which speaks not only to the effects of the war but to the value of emerging Freudian psychotherapy.

Strategies and Impacts of The Sukabumi Reading Enthusiast Program on Community Literacy

This study aimed to explore the strategies and impacts of the Sukabumi Reading Enthusiast Program on fostering community literacy and reading habits within the community. Employing a descriptive method, data were collected through observation, study of the documents and interviews with 25 participants to provide comprehensive insights into the program's effectiveness. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis and triangulation. The findings reveal that the program's structured and habitual activities, such as the weekly Readhaton sessions and daily reading practices before school lessons, significantly enhance reading engagement among participants. These activities, embedded into the school curriculum and supported by community involvement, have led to a notable increase in reading interest and proficiency. The selection of diverse and age-appropriate reading materials, tailored to the needs and preferences of the community, further supports the program's success. Moreover, the program's impact extends beyond immediate participants, fostering a culture of reading that involves families and public spaces. The study highlights the program's success in increasing the number of books read, the time spent reading, and overall participation in community reading activities. These outcomes demonstrate the program's efficacy in promoting literacy, enhancing creative thinking, and developing sustainable reading habits among community members.

Wavefront Changes during a Sustained Reading Task in Presbyopic Eyes.

The objective of this study was to assess the effect of sustained reading on the temporal changes in the wavefront error in the presbyopic eye. The wavefront aberration of the eyes was measured using an IRX3 Shack-Hartmann aberrometer before and after (immediately, 5 min, and 10 min after) a reading task. Temporal changes in C20, C40, and C3-1 coefficient values of the eyes were plotted, showing a predominant number of V-shaped patterns (for C40 and C3-1) and inverse V-shaped patterns (for C20) among the study group, and the percentages (between 27 and 73%) were reported. The median of the total RMS of aberrations and the RMS of HOA (higher-order aberrations), which included comatic (3rd order) and spherical-like aberrations (4th and 6th order), increased immediately after finishing the near-vision reading task and then decreased. The median of RMS of comatic aberrations had a similar pattern of variations, while the median of RMS of spherical-like aberrations displayed an opposite pattern. Simulating the aberration changes due to lens decentration caused by relaxed zonules during 4 D accommodation in an eye model demonstrated that the expected range of changes for the vertical coma and spherical aberrations are in the order of 0.001 and 0.01 μm, respectively, which could justify why the observed changes were not statistically significant. The observed dynamic changes in HOA might be linked to the biomechanical characteristics and alterations in the displacement of the crystalline lens following prolonged near-vision tasks in presbyopic people. Although some predominant patterns under some conditions were shown, they exhibit considerable inter-subject and inter-ocular variability. This might be due to slight misalignments while fixating on the internal extended object in the aberrometer.

Cultivating Reading Comprehension Habits to Promote Autonomous English Language Learning among Students at Tuyen Quang School for Excellence (TSE)

In the ever-evolving landscape of English language education, fostering autonomous learning has emerged as a crucial imperative. At Tuyen Quang School for Excellence (TSE), where students aspire to excel in their English proficiency, the cultivation of effective reading comprehension habits holds the key to unlocking their full potential as self-directed learners. This study explores the current state of reading comprehension practices at TSE and proposes a multifaceted approach to cultivate sustainable reading habits that can propel students towards greater autonomy in their English language learning. The research methodology employed a mixed-methods approach, encompassing both quantitative and qualitative data collection. A comprehensive survey of TSE students and in-depth interviews with their English language teachers provided invaluable insights into the challenges, perceptions, and needs surrounding reading comprehension development. The analysis of these findings revealed a clear disconnect between the importance placed on reading comprehension and the students' actual engagement and proficiency levels. To address this gap, the study presents a strategic intervention plan that combines targeted instructional strategies, technology-enhanced learning resources, and a collaborative community-building initiative. By equipping teachers with evidence-based pedagogical techniques, empowering students to take ownership of their reading practices, and fostering a school-wide culture of reading, the proposed framework aims to transform TSE into a vibrant hub of autonomous English language learning. The implementation of this holistic approach is expected to yield tangible improvements in students' reading comprehension skills, foster their intrinsic motivation to engage with English texts, and cultivate a lifelong habit of independent language exploration. The findings of this study hold significant implications for English language education programs in Vietnam and beyond, offering a replicable model for developing self-directed, adaptable, and proficient English language learners.

The Impact of Shared Book Reading on Children and Families: A Study of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Tamworth, Australia

ABSTRACT This longitudinal cohort-study investigated the impact of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (the Imagination Library) in Tamworth, Australia. The Imagination Library delivers age-appropriate books to children from the time of their birth until their fifth birthday. Caregivers of Tamworth children completed surveys about their experience with the program after receiving one book (“baseline;” N = 343) and then at six months (N = 116) and three years (N = 89). Their responses indicated that children in the Imagination Library were read to more frequently, for longer durations, and had more books in their homes than the average Australian child, as represented by large independent databases. Tamworth caregivers who read to their child at least once a day at baseline were nearly five times more likely to read daily after six months and three years than those who did not read daily at baseline (OR 4.9 (95% CI 1.8,13.7)). Further, children who were read to daily at three years showed more emerging literacy skills than those who were not read to daily. These outcomes suggest that shared book reading generally, and the Imagination Library specifically, encourages sustained reading practices that are associated with developing emerging literacy skills.

Neural consequences of symptomatic convergence insufficiency: A small sample study.

Convergence insufficiency (CI) is an oculomotor abnormality characterised by exophoria and inadequate convergence when focusing on nearby objects. CI has been shown to cause symptoms when reading. However, the downstream consequences on brain structure have yet to be investigated. Here, we investigated the neural consequences of symptomatic CI, focusing on the left arcuate fasciculus, a bundle of white matter fibres which supports reading ability and has been associated with reading deficits. We compared the arcuate fasciculus microstructure of participants with symptomatic CI versus normal binocular vision (NBV). Six CI participants and seven NBV controls were included in the analysis. All participants were scanned with 3 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and anatomical and diffusion-weighted images were acquired. Diffusion-weighted images were processed with TRACULA to identify the arcuate fasciculus in each participant and compute volume and radial diffusivity (RD). Compared with NBV controls, those with symptomatic CI had significantly smaller arcuate fasciculi bilaterally (left: t = -3.21, p = 0.008; right: t = -3.29, p = 0.007), and lower RD in the left (t = -2.66, p = 0.02), but not the right (t = -0.81, p = 0.44, false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected p > 0.05) arcuate fasciculus. Those with higher levels of reading symptoms had smaller arcuate fasciculi (r = -0.74, p = 0.004) with lower RD (r = -0.61, p = 0.03). These findings suggest that symptomatic CI may lead to microstructural changes in the arcuate fasciculus. Since it is highly unlikely that abnormalities in the arcuate fasciculus are the cause of the neuromuscular deficits in the eyes, we argue that these changes may be a potential neuroplastic consequence of disruptions in sustained reading.

The Role of the Reading Terrace in Increasing Village Children's Reading Interest

Books and libraries play an essential role in the democratization of information, even in the dissemination of knowledge, especially for today's children and youth who are more familiar with mobile phones than reading books. This paper aimed to investigate the role of the reading terrace in increasing village children’s reading interest. This study used a qualitative descriptive approach using the participatory action research method to determine the role of reading terraces in increasing children's interest in Balingka Village. This research data collection technique used observation, interviews, and documentation. Data analysis techniques used the Miles and Huberman models in this study. The results of this study show that the availability of terrace facilities can influence the reading interest of Balingka children to be more effective and optimal for carrying out activities related to sustainable reading.

“Reading A Book, By A Gain In Your Wit”--How to cultivate high school students' sustainable reading: A multi-factor analysis

Reading cultivation is an important task of education. In order to ensure the sustainable reading behavior of high school students, more and more scholars begin to pay attention to the research of reading psychology. In order to explore the psychological mechanism of high school students' reading, based on the theory of self-efficacy and achievement motivation, this study explores the chain intermediary model of 600 high school students' reading motivation influencing reading satisfaction through reading self-efficacy and social support. The results show that there are significant positive predictors among reading motivation, reading self-efficacy, social support and reading satisfaction. At the same time, reading self-efficacy and social support play an intermediary role between reading motivation and reading satisfaction of high school students respectively, and jointly play a chain intermediary role. The research results are of great theoretical and practical significance for understanding the reading psychology of senior high school students and ensuring their sustainable reading behavior.

Interactive projection information generation and feedback for reading behaviour

Interactive reading is a new reading behavior in the age of intelligence. The dual-track development of new media and interactive technology has led to changes in both reading behavior and reading experience. This paper has discussed the information generation and information feedback of interactive reading, and analysed the important applications of projection technology, gesture recognition and QR code technology in interactive reading behavior from various projection interaction technologies. Through the development process of the interactive projection of the atlas series named “City Flowers of Beijing”, we aim to demonstrate the design of interactive and sustainable reading forms, deliver the multi-dimensional, multi-level and diversified reading information, create a reading experience that is both physiologically and psychologically satisfactory to the audience in the age of intelligence, and provide a new direction for the development of human-computer reading behavior in the new media age.

Management Of A School Library As A Learning Center And Building A Sustainable Reading Interest: A Cases Study On MI Islamiyah

Management Of A School Library As A Learning Center And Building A Sustainable Reading Interest: A Cases Study On MI Islamiyah

Further Validation of Comfortable Print Size as a Parameter for Clinical Low-Vision Assessment.

Comfortable print size (CfPS) has been proposed as a clinical alternative to deriving critical print size (CPS) in the assessment of reading function of vision-impaired patients. This study aimed to assess the repeatability of CfPS and to compare assessment duration and values to CPS measures and acuity reserves. Thirty-four adults with vision impairment had their reading function assessed. Two assessments of CfPS were made by asking, "What is the smallest print size that you would find comfortable using?" Reading parameters including CPS were determined using the MNREAD card chart and MNREAD app. CfPS was quicker to assess (mean ± SD, 144 ± 77 seconds) than the MNREAD card (231 ± 177 seconds) or app (285 ± 43 seconds). Within-session repeatability of CfPS showed no significant bias or variation across the functional range and limits of agreement (LoA) of ±0.09 logMAR. CfPS values were 0.10 logMAR larger than card CPS values, but no different from app CPS values, with LoA of ±0.43 to 0.45 logMAR. Acuity reserve (comparing CfPS to card reading acuity) was 1.9:1 on average, with a maximum of 5.0:1. CfPS offers a quick, repeatable, and individualized clinical measure of the print size required for sustained reading that reflects CPS values obtained by more traditional measures. CfPS is an appropriate clinical measure of reading function to use in determining the magnification requirements of vision impaired patients for sustained reading tasks.

Constructivism, Democracy and Symbolic Representation: A Formal/Stylistic Perspective

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the normative dilemma raised by the constructivist turn in representation theory by focusing on a neglected aspect of such dilemma: under which conditions representation − taken in its existential and symbolic senses − can enhance democracy. By developing sustained readings of Laclau and Voegelin, it shows how stylistic/formal features such as a figurative and evocative language and a capacity to persuade both rationally and extra-rationally can be key elements for making representation democratic.

Clamouring for Legal Protection: What the Great Books Teach Us About People Fleeing from Persecution. By Robert F. Barsky.

In this book, Robert F. Barsky provides new readings of the ‘Great Books’ (a.k.a. canonical literature) through a refugee studies perspective. Although Barsky’s book is of interest to anyone interested in literature and/or refugees, it is primarily addressed to law students, and situates itself in the ‘the law-and-literature movement’ that is ‘based on the notion that the engagement of law students and lawyers with literature about law and lawyering can help develop or maintain ethical sensibilities’ (p. vii). In fact, although the nexus between law and literature appears to be incongruent in the first glance, Barsky shows how literary references can often be found in legal judgments (p. 23). The book has five chapters based on key topics related to refugees along with the introduction and the conclusion. In these chapters, Barsky offers readings of canonical literature that highlight their hitherto suppressed ‘refugee-like situations’ (p. ix). While this is certainly a novel approach since such a sustained reading of the canon from a refugee studies perspective has not been previously attempted, some of Barsky’s readings come across as more compelling than others.

Badiou´s Social Ontology: Another Theory of the Subject

This article tackles a thorny issue within the reception of Badiou’s philosophy, i.e., the question of the role of the “social” within the ontological framework it outlines. Acknowledging that the question of the social is underdeveloped in Badiou’s system, the paper argues that there are resources in it to develop a social ontology, and attempos to flesh it out through an original and sustained reading of Badiou’s key formula on the distinction between democratic materialism and materialist dialectic: “there are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths”.

Badiou’s Social Ontology: Another Theory of the Subject

This article tackles a thorny issue within the reception of Badiou’s philosophy, i.e., the question of the role of the “social” within the ontological framework it outlines. Acknowledging that the question of the social is underdeveloped in Badiou’s system, the paper argues that there are resources in it to develop a social ontology, and attempos to flesh it out through an original and sustained reading of Badiou’s key formula on the distinction between democratic materialism and materialist dialectic: “there are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths”.

The Afterlife of Enclosure: British Realism, Character, and the Commons by Carolyn Lesjak

Reviewed by: The Afterlife of Enclosure: British Realism, Character, and the Commons by Carolyn Lesjak Joseph Albernaz LESJAK, CAROLYN. The Afterlife of Enclosure: British Realism, Character, and the Commons. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021. 256 pp. $90.00 hardcover; $30.00 softcover. The significance of the enclosure of common lands for English literary culture of the long nineteenth century—indeed, for the literatures of the British Isles (not to mention the imperial periphery) as a whole since at least the sixteenth century—has been enormously underappreciated. Carolyn Lesjak’s refreshing and bold recent book The Afterlife of Enclosure: British Realism, Character, and the Commons is a vital step forward, not only in affording this context its proper importance for studying Victorian fiction, but in providing conceptual and methodological tools that will be of interest to scholars working on other periods, genres, and problems. Lesjak turns to major works of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy to reframe some of the basic contexts of the Victorian novel and the fundamental machinery of realism [End Page 452] with attention to the long, slow violence of enclosure, which, following Rob Nixon’s work, she calls an “attritional catastrophe.” Focusing on the traces of the lands once held, managed, and cultivated collectively (the commons), and the ordinary, low, vulgar, and everyday (the common), Lesjak’s readings uncover a “worldly ethics” and “radical politics” at the heart of a bevy of major Victorian novels which, however familiar they are, feel revitalized in Lesjak’s hands (4, 3). By the early Victorian period, the process of land enclosure in England was essentially complete (save for the occasional late privatization grab or breaking the will of a particularly stubborn village). But this fact is precisely why the nineteenth-century realist novel, Owl of Minerva-style, appears as such an intriguing and apposite form for taking stock of what has been lost (or rather, defeated), registering what might linger from the cultures of the commons, and imagining how these lingering communal textures might be re-energized in new contexts and configurations. In addition to Lesjak’s substantial (and for this reader, welcome) framing move of enjoining scholars to pay more attention to enclosure, the commons, and their “persistence” as essential to the formation of industrial capitalist modernity, the book makes three broad significant contributions, to my mind. First, it works to disentangle the realist novel and liberalism, putting convincing pressure on more received accounts of the cozy marriage between these two formations. Second, it deftly thinks through the problem of enclosure as a problem of “figurability,” looking to the novel for technologies of oblique representation that can encompass slow, indiscrete, temporally and spatially dispersed events like enclosure. And third, it presents an original intervention into how we might understand the working of characterization in the Victorian novel as flecked everywhere with the residue of the commons. Recasting Alex Woloch’s influential account of character in his book The One vs. the Many (2003), Lesjak finds “the relationship between individuals and their social world” to resemble a dialectical dance, “the one as the many” (5). Rather than focusing on individual novels for sustained readings, Lesjak treats each of her three main figures’ prolific work as a complex unity, cutting across a wide swath of their fiction, while leaving room for perfectly timed close readings of specific passages to illustrate her conceptual claims. This approach of seeing each writer’s work as an “ongoing thought experiment” rather than a series of individually enclosed narratives comports methodologically with her claims about the importance of the commons, and also keeps the book nicely paced (9). Each close reading—say, of one of Jo’s devastating speeches (“They dies more than they lives”) in the second chapter of Bleak House, for example—takes on a new significance when placed primarily in the context of an author’s entire oeuvre rather than in the novel in which the passage is housed. After an introduction and opening chapter construct the connections between realist fiction and the process of enclosure, the first chapter turns to Dickens, reading his novels’ famously exaggerated characters alongside popular contemporaneous character books (collections of “types”), arguing for the latter’s...

The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture by Alfred Thomas

Reviewed by: The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture by Alfred Thomas Elizabeth Allen alfred thomas, The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 225. isbn: 978-1-8438-4566-9. $105. Over more than two decades, Alfred Thomas has brought to light for an English readership the international court culture of medieval Bohemia and its influence in England. Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420 (University of Minnesota Press, 1998) took Anne's marriage to Richard II as the justification for a masterful survey of Czech literature with an eye to inviting comparisons with English literature. Thomas's subsequent work on Czech and English literature, A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cornell University Press, 2007), cemented this essential scholarly project of making known in English a thoroughly cosmopolitan eastern European literary history; a deeper dive into the Bohemian connections to Chaucer's works came in Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer's Female Audience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). From Thomas' erudite and meticulous body of work, scholars of late-medieval English literature have gained crucial insight into the cultural relations between [End Page 158] England and Bohemia. Thomas' work is essential to an important twenty-first century scholarly undertaking—spearheaded by David Wallace (Europe: A Literary History) and taken further by scholars like Candace Barrington (Global Chaucers) and Marion Turner (Chaucer: A European Life)—to widen the context of English literary culture to include all of Europe and indeed, the rest of the globe. In his present monograph on the subject, Thomas details Bohemian art, literature, and statecraft in order to pursue readings of late fourteenth-century works by Chaucer, Gower, the writer of the Alliterative Morte Darthur, and the Pearl poet. The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture is a handsome volume: printed on clay-covered paper, it contains 40 high-resolution, full color in-line illustrations. These visual materials draw a particularly vivid picture of the ties between Bohemia and England: the shared materials, styles, and themes which, Thomas argues, emphasize not so much national identities as 'familial and dynastic affiliations that transcended the west-east European divide' (p. xvi). This book consists of four chapters and a conclusion. In Chapter One, Thomas establishes that Richard II's court found creative inspiration in the multilingualism of Anne's Bohemian relatives, especially her father, Emperor Charles VI, and her half brother, King Wenceslas IV. This political link creates occasions for reading the English poetry of the late fourteenth century in an international context. In Chapter Two, Thomas treats Anne as the real-life corollary to Venus in Gower's Confessio Amantis and to Alceste in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, where the 'collaboration' with the patron 'is clearly not working out' (p. 71). In a series of short sections, Thomas explores the literary culture of female patronage in other works by Chaucer and by other authors including Dante, Petrarch, and Machaut. Chapter Three turns to more sustained readings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Alliterative Morte Darthur, arguing that both poems, far from provincial, register the international court culture he describes. In Gawain's seduction scenes, he finds a reflection of Robert de Vere's scandalous affair with Anne's lady in waiting, Agnes Lancecrona; in the Morte, he finds in King Arthur's grief a reflection of Richard II's grief for de Vere upon his death. In both poems Thomas finds an ambivalence about the moral and political values that international court culture seems to embrace. Chapter Four finds that Pearl's 'curious blend of consolatio and courtly love motifs' (p. 167) registers links to Bohemian architectural, visual, and poetic texts: Karlstein Castle outside Prague, and the Czech Legend of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Here and in the book's conclusion, Thomas describes Richard's political ambition and his investment in the ideology of sacral kingship as thoroughly embedded in an international court culture shared by England and Bohemia—an international culture that, after Richard's death, gave way to the comparative insularity of the Lancastrians. Thomas' work proceeds by testing associations (as opposed...

Narrating Human Rights in Africa by Eleni Coundouriotis

Reviewed by: Narrating Human Rights in Africa by Eleni Coundouriotis Bonny Ibhawoh (bio) Eleni Coundouriotis, Narrating Human Rights in Africa (Routledge, 2020), ISBN 9780367194666, 206 pages. Eleni Coundouriotis’s book is founded on an undeniable premise first espoused by Edward Said: “Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain, and circulate them.”1 Because facts of abuse do not speak for themselves, we must rely on human rights narratives that testify to violations as the evidentiary foundations for redress and protection. The challenge of protecting and promoting human rights can only be met when the voices of victims and their interlocutors are heard, understood, and acted upon. Narratives of rights are the foundations upon which academics theorize, activists mobilize, and the state intervenes to protect human rights. This is why Coundouriotis’ focus on human rights narratives in this book marks an important contribution to human rights scholarship. The main contribution of this book is the centering of narrative in our understanding of human rights. Human rights scholars have not paid enough attention to the place of narrative in defining, contesting, and promoting human rights norms. Enough attention has also not been given to examining how narratives shape the protection of human rights and redress mechanisms for victims of abuse. We often take for granted the stories and testimonies of violations upon which human rights meanings and principles are founded. Narrating Human Rights seeks to bridge this gap by exploring how narratives affirm the values of social justice and human rights while at the same time creating new categories of thought that challenge human rights dogma. The author does this by examining human rights from the perspective of writers from the African continent and situating key theoretical concepts in African perspectives, undercutting the stereotypes of victimhood and voicelessness. The book takes as its starting point the imperative of challenging a methodology that positions narrative as peripheral rather than central to human rights scholarship. [End Page 865] Instead of positioning literary texts as illustrative of points already theorized elsewhere, Coundouriotis argues that “we must foreground the literature to show the concepts it offers, the ideas and responses stemming from complex historical circumstances in Africa and expressed by African writers.”2 Narrative in this context is a means of engaging with historical events, giving a complex account of how truth and reality are entangled. It portrays and mobilizes historical actors, reinscribing them into human rights discourses from which they have been omitted or their voices silenced. The book offers a useful schematization of human rights narrative. The author delineates three types of employment for human rights in literary narrative plots, each presenting a different construction of the heroic. The first type is the moral crusade, which is temporarily thwarted but holds a strong promise of future fulfillment. The second is the witness of a journalist or rapporteur who tells of unassimilable abuse and brutality and positions himself as a redeemer witness striving to create a vision of hope. The third is the collective story of a democratization movement which constructs a heroic and determined people whose efforts, though falling short, must be sustained. Common to all three human rights plots is that they convey teleological moral progress. They emphasize what the story moves toward and the kind of closure it proposes, despite the setbacks that are part of the historical account of events. The author takes up the key challenges to the narration of human rights in which the contribution of African writers is important. The objective is to show how African voices and perspectives shape how we think about human rights and how they have influenced their meanings. The perspective on human rights narration offered in this book is hybrid, engaged with both history and actual events. This is evident in the sustained readings of several topics offered in the chapters. Chapters examine the figure of the child soldier in relation to the history of conflict and state-building in Africa; the tension between flight and stasis in refugee and migrant; the challenge of testifying about rape in war; and narratives that evoke the disappeared in the context of resistance to state oppression...