All of us know stories of the Holocaust. Recently, I read something on social media that claimed that The Diary of a Young Girl is among the ten most widely read books in the world. Don't get me wrong; stories of the Holocaust are crucial. They teach us lessons that are horrifyingly relevant today.Yet, when we read stories about Germany, Hitler and the Jews to the exclusion of stories of horrors that have occurred - and continue to occur - in other parts of the world, we feed into the age-old problem of Eurocentricism. We need other stories so that we don't think of the Holocaust as one terrible period in history, which is over and done with.Before We Were Free is the story of a child living under a dictator in the Dominican Republic. Twelve-year-old Anita does not believe that she is not free. What does that even mean? She lives with her extended family and … [Read more...]