Taking Sides: A Memoir About Love, War, and Changing the World

This memoir by human-rights advocate Tadros, deputy director of advocacy and representative to the United Nations for Amnesty International, illuminates horrific war crimes, brutal state repression, and more, without ever losing sight of humanity’s power to create meaningful, systems-based change. With deeply intimate moments captured in powerful prose, the book reveals how Tadros’s human-rights advocacy began where her previous work as an award-winning war correspondent ended. Her personal stories of belonging (or not) are woven into a narrative that’s also about the ways individual stories help people—if they choose to look around them, a choice that is in itself a marker of privilege—to understand bigger, more collective violence and trauma. From writing policy briefs and showing up as a correspondent on the frontlines, to standing up for human rights on a global scale, Tadros shares lessons that demonstrate how critical it is for everyone to discover the power they have to choose to make a difference.