Justice Through Storytelling and Testimony

Sor Juana used written language to claim authority over her own narrative, countering official accounts that would diminish or distort her life. This concept recognizes storytelling and testimony as instruments of justice for children. When children tell their stories—about abuse, discrimination, poverty, resilience—they provide irreplaceable evidence of how systems fail or succeed. Listening to children's narratives transforms abstract policy discussions into human reality. A child's testimony about hunger makes poverty concrete; a child's account of bullying exposes institutional negligence; a child's story of resistance demonstrates human dignity. Children's rights are advanced through serious attention to their narratives: in courts, in policy spaces, in media, and in communities. This requires creating safe conditions for storytelling, ensuring children are heard without judgment, and taking their accounts seriously as testimony rather than entertainment or sentimentality. In Sor Juana's tradition, narrative is a form of knowledge and resistance. For children's rights, centering children's stories means recognizing them as authorities on their own experience and as voices essential to understanding and addressing injustice.