Hannah Rose Thomas has painted these portraits with her whole heart and likens this painting to prayer; it is surely an act of love. As the women look out at us from their portraits and share their words on the page, this book brings us close to their experience, helping people everywhere understand what these women have endured and how they can help.

As works of art, the portraits are extraordinarily skillful and beautiful, but they are so much more than that. They offer a glimpse into the soul of women who have experienced the most unspeakable suffering.

Featuring moving and beautiful portraits of female survivors of conflict and sexual violence, Hannah Rose Thomas’ art imparts dignity, resistance and justice to these women. ... By treating them “as subjects in their own stories rather than as objects in the stories of others”, they become testimony to our shared humanity.

So beautiful and moving.

An incredible book reflecting a decade’s worth of work by artist and human rights activist Hannah Rose Thomas. …What a powerful collection.

For Hannah Rose Thomas, art is a means to process trauma, and to give expression to feelings that words and language are too limited to convey: 'There is an absence of cultural narratives that allow women to look upon their survival as heroic, courage.'

Hannah's soft-spoken nature belies a bold and compassionate spirit and her mission to give voice to the voiceless through the healing properties of art. [She] has organized art programs in hotspots around the globe, gently teaching and ministering to survivors of horrendous violence and loss.

The goal behind the book is to inspire empathy and compassion for these women through the portraits within. Art, because of its contemplative nature, can help foster such values, which Thomas believes are easy to shake loose in modern society.

British artist Thomas’s stunning debut presents her paintings of two dozen women who have endured persecution and displacement across the globe. Thomas visited compounds and refugee camps to interview her subjects, and renders their stories with a brevity that belies their intensity.…But Thomas’s portraits are the high point: she captures her subjects’ particularities, as well as the sometimes-haunted, sometimes-resolute gaze they share­.…Fashioned with uncommon care, this impresses.

As I sobbed my way from one grim life to the other, I felt increasingly certain that this was beautiful art doing beautiful things in a terrible world. Bravo, Hannah Rose Thomas.

One of Hannah’s aims is to capture not only the courage and stoicism of the women who have suffered so much, but also the nobility, dignity, and extraordinary compassion that many of them manage to retain, despite their traumatic experiences. I very much hope that this beautiful book will help enable the Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian women’s voices to be heard, as well as to highlight the issue of the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in general.

Hannah Rose Thomas is a remarkable painter and story-teller. Containing the portraits of survivors of extreme violence (and sexual and gender-based violence in the case of many), this book centers on their individual stories and, by extension, the horrific atrocities experienced by their communities. There may well be tears, but those tears are often unaccompanied by other emotions. There is so much control and a natural humility, the effect is simply startling. It is not what the observer commonly expects – and Hannah captures the authority within each survivor perfectly and beautifully.