Can memoir become a tool for action?

Can stories about breaking silence to forge an identity and reclaim one's own narrative change hearts and minds?

In Life We Trust: Memoirs to Create a Movement presents the work of 57 writers exploring the pressing issues of our time through their personal narratives. As they wrestle with the risks inherent in both speaking up and staying silent, and as they confront daily injustices both subtle and all too visible, they summon the courage to persist and persevere against all odds.

Written in spaces as varied as prisons and jails, refugee camps, shelters, worker centers, under-resourced classrooms, libraries, and art centers, these stories expand who writes literature and shift what literature can be and do.

This collection represents 25 years of story-shaping by Herstory Writers Network, a community memoir writing organization dedicated to changing hearts, minds, and policies one story at a time.