Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World's Most Infamous Prison

By Sarah Mirk (Editor) and Omar El Akkad

An anthology of illustrated narratives about the prison and the lives it changed forever.

 


In January 2002, the United States sent a group of Muslim men they suspected of terrorism to a prison in Guantánamo Bay. They were the first of roughly 780 prisoners who would be held there—and forty inmates still remain. Eighteen years later, very few of them have been ever charged with a crime.


In Guantánamo Voices, journalist Sarah Mirk and her team of diverse, talented graphic novel artists tell the stories of ten people whose lives have been shaped and affected by the prison, including former prisoners, lawyers, social workers, and service members. This collection of illustrated interviews explores the history of Guantánamo and the world post-9/11, presenting this complicated partisan issue through a new lens.

"These stories are shocking, essential, haunting, thought-provoking. This book should be required reading for all earthlings." —The Iowa Review
"This anthology disturbs and illuminates in equal measure." —Publishers Weekly
"Editor Mirk presents an extraordinary chronicle of the notorious prison, featuring first-person accounts by prisoners, guards, and other constituents that demonstrate the facility's cruel reputation. . . . An eye-opening, damning indictment of one of America's worst trespasses that continues to this day." —Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647001209

Omar El Akkad

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His short story 'Government Slots' was selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2020 anthology. What Strange Paradise is his second novel.

Book preview

[vanessa_menez-453497 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Firstly thank you to Abrams Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC.

I have always wanted to obtain some detailed information and knowledge about Guantanamo Bay, its history, formation and prisoners. And this book was just what I was looking for.

It is anthology of illustrated narratives by journalist Sarah Mirk about the prison,former prisoners, lawyers, social workers, and service members. It depicts the horror of the place and the lives that it has affected.

This book is so well written and it just invokes so much anger and sadness within you about the cruelty and injustice that the prisoners have faced. Im a believer of justice and I hope and pray these prisoners get justice because while it is important to punish the guilty, it is also equally important to protect the innocent.

[villemezbrown · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An adherence to human and civil rights is an important distinction between us and terrorists. This book offers firsthand accounts of people who have run, been detained at, and/or opposed the disgraceful blot on America's reputation which is the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Important information illustrated well by eleven different artists.

Want a double-feature of misery? Team this with Guantánamo Kid: The True Story of Mohammed El-Gharani.

[m_k_m_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

The editor's note that prefaces the galley copy of Guantanamo Voices claims the book does not justify or condemn the existence of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. But that's not true, it's a book designed to make you angry – quite rightly and quite well.

The choice of epigraphs – excerpts from the US Constitution and Geneva Conventions – immediately skewers the hypocrisy on which the camp was built and continues to be maintained. It's a story in which America is a champion of liberty, beacon of hope in one hand and sword of justice in the other. "Hey, what are you getting all up on us for? We're the good guys!"

What are frequently referred to as "American" values are in fact values shared by most of the Western world: they have democracy in Germany, you can get a fair trial in France, individual freedom is protected in Canada. So when America doesn't uphold hose values, it's not just failing to uphold its own high-minded ideals, it's using its position of cultural, economic and military dominance to excuse itself from the responsibilities it still claims to champion.

It's a book that makes you angry to remember there is no such thing as evil, but that there is a lot of motivated cruelty in the world. Motivated by fear, inadequacy and arrogance. It's doubtful anyone truly believes any of the men still held at the camp represents a significant threat to the United States, but plenty of people do have bases to motivate and faces to save.