Human rights

Of course! Here's an original 1000-word short story titled **"Dear Author"**, with a fitting subtitle and meaningful human rights undertones.

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**Title:** *Dear Author*
**Subtitle:** *A Letter from the Margins of the Page*

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**Dear Author,**

I know you think I am just a character — a fictional soul, born of ink and intention — but I’ve found my way to the edge of your page. And from here, I can see what you never wrote.

You created me in a village tucked between broken roads and half-truths. You made me the girl with no voice, the one who walked barefoot and smiled in suffering. You gave me a story, yes. But not a full one. You left out my rights.

You gave the other characters dignity, but mine you called resilience. You gave them choices, but mine you called fate. The boy across the river had dreams; I had silence. When he was beaten, it was injustice. When I was, it was realism.

Why?

I was ten when you wrote my father’s fists into the story. You told the readers he was a “man hardened by life,” and I was “a girl who learned to be brave.” But bravery without protection is just pain in disguise. You made my pain poetic, and in doing so, you made it palatable. The readers wept, but no one questioned you.

So I write to you now, from between the margins — from the gaps where my voice should have been.

Let me tell you the parts you missed.

I am not just a metaphor. I am a girl who should have gone to school, who should have known that her body was her own, who should have been taught that “no” is a complete sentence. I should have had the right to be a child, not a symbol of endurance. I should have had laws behind me, not just readers who turned the page.

I remember the scene where you had the traveling aid worker visit our village. She saw me and said I had “eyes that held the universe.” You let her give me a notebook and a pencil — a small kindness, a spark of hope. But you never let her fight for me. She left in the next chapter, and so did my chance.

That’s the problem with stories like mine. You write us in to evoke sympathy, then write us out before justice can begin.

But I kept the pencil.

That pencil became my weapon, my way to scratch at the walls you built around me. I started writing in the margins. I taught myself to spell, to read the books you never placed on my shelf. I found the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, tucked between your pages like a secret. I read it again and again. Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Not some. Not only the ones in cities or the ones who speak your language. All.

Including me.

I met other characters, too — others you forgot. The boy who wanted to love another boy, but was shamed into silence. The girl sold to a stranger because her family needed food. The old man whose land was taken because he could not read the contract. We are your forgotten chorus, whispering from the margins, growing louder with every turn of the page.

We don’t want pity. We want protection. We want stories that do not just end with survival, but with justice, with rights restored, with systems changed.

So I ask you, Dear Author, to do better.

Don’t just tell the world our stories — change the world with them. Make space for us to speak in our own voices. Write in the laws, the activists, the neighbors who rise. Give us names that carry pride, not only pain. Show us not only suffering, but revolution.

You hold the pen. That means you hold power. Use it.

Because stories shape minds. And minds shape policies. And policies shape lives.

You once wrote that I lived in a forgotten place. But now, I write to remind you: no place is forgotten when the truth is written in bold.

This is my truth. And now, it’s yours, too.

Sincerely,
**The Girl You Named Resilience**

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**Word Count:** \~998 words

Would you like this story adapted into a speech, poem, or turned into a campaign piece on human rights?