Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Stories shape not only how we understand the world but also how we live in it. The way a narrative presents the unfolding of events or sketches the layers of a person’s character can have monumental consequences for the people involved in them. Yet across historical periods and global spaces, entire peoples, cultures, and communities—as well as the individuals within them—have been robbed of their stories through erasure, vilification, and distortion. At the heart of this book lies the question: If people are unknown in deep and unjust ways because their stories have been stolen, don’t they have the right to be known? Drawing on a framework from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which affirms the right to know for victims of gross violations or injustices, this book makes a novel and urgent case for its counterpart: the right to be known. Both rights, it is argued, can be understood within a framework of epistemic reparations. The ultimate goal is to shed light on the normative demands these reparations generate, as well as some of the concrete steps that can be taken to fulfill them, so that each of us might get to work right now in the ongoing process of addressing the epistemic wrongs of those who have been relegated to the margins of the unknown.</jats:p>