In a recent email posted on the International Auto/Biography Association mailing list Nigerian-English writer Precious Williams describes how she was “seized by something called the Black African Crime squad in Berlin,” held for about ten hours in a prison cell on suspicion of passport fraud, verbally abused and physically and emotionally humiliated on the base of her racial origin.
The recent close interconnection between human rights and life writing has favoured and motivated the human rights movements globally and locally. While offering newly valued subject positions from which to speak counter-historically, the publication of testimonios such as those of Rigoberta Menchú and María Teresa Tula have spurred debates on genre definition and authenticity.
This paper will examine several issues raised by the publication of this email and its global dissemination, considering that these kinds of writing fall into the general question of whether such global communications actually empower the victims. How do testimonies and personal narratives such as those described by Williams in her letter actually stretch the boundaries of life-writing and those of human rights? How do the recipients of such an email test the veracity of its claims and contents? What kind of responses can this email elicit? How does such an email empower either the victim or the recipients, or does it merely lead to passive readership? Does such an email or any form of personal narrative/testimony mobilize resistance, or does it simply add to the avalanche of information disseminated through cyberspace?