I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir is often heralded as a pioneer of the feminist movement thanks to her book “The Second Sex,” which critiques the restrictions a patriarchal society puts on women. But De Beauvoir was concerned with more than one kind of freedom. She worked for the French Resistance during World War II, and later lent her influence to the student activist movements of the 1960s and the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1970s. These words spring from her novel “The Blood of Others,” which pulls from De Beauvoir’s own experience witnessing the suffering of refugees. She reminds us that we all deserve the freedom to be and live as we choose — indeed, it is a basic human right.