by Wanda Waterman

The Voice Magazine, Volume 22 Issue 20 2014-05-16

“I definitely believe that art is the best way to produce social change.”
– Pedro Reyes

It’s a balancing act. The socially aware artist runs the risk of sabotaging her art and even appearing annoyingly self-righteous. And after all, isn’t a little “art-for-art’s sake” necessary to the production of good art?

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the most popular books in the United States in the 19th century (second only to the Bible). The book sparked an unquenchable national passion to end slavery by humanizing the characters of slaves and clearly showing that there was no way that the institution of slavery could be rendered humane. Abraham Lincoln is said to have jokingly suggested she’d launched the American Civil War. She was also a vocal proponent of women’s rights.
(Read the rest here.)