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rickjones 's review for:
challenging
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
Thank you to NetGalley and Abrams ComicArts for providing me an advanced reader copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.
As expected, this is a difficult book to read. It contains multiple perspectives and stories from people who worked at Guantanamo, people who were indefinitely imprisoned there, and those who offered them legal counsel. Every piece of information was fact-checked extensively to ensure credibility, and the artists referenced photographs whenever possible. I was aware of some elements of what happened, and continues to happen, to those imprisoned at Guantanamo but I had no idea of the extensity of legal maneuvers required to creative these "detainment centers". Once reading these accounts it is impossible to remain ignorant of the depravity the United States government purposefully allowed in the name of a war that was designed to never end.
Most people my age have no personal memories of 9/11. Yet the racist and Islamophobic anger that perpetuates the violence displayed here is still taught to many in my generation on the basis of honoring the victims of 9/11. They have been presented a purposely skewed view of reality that ignores the terror our own institutions have inflicted on communities in the Middle East. They do not feel the outrage they should when described state-sanction torture methods, because propaganda justifying these acts of unforgivable brutality have been drilled into their minds for almost as long as they've lived. Books such as this one are so important not just because they tell the facts of what has occurred at Guantanamo, but because they return the humanity of these people who have been imprisoned and falsely portrayed as monsters over the course of a generation. Their humanity and trauma should not have to be laid bare for others to feel empathy and anger for them, but ideally, those are the emotions this book will cause anyone who encounters it.
I hope this book is circulated widely and utilized in education curriculums. It took ten years to make its publication a reality and unflinchingly display truths that have been deliberately hidden from or misconstrued to the public over the course of the last eighteen. I do not take the opportunity to read it and listen to the voices of Guantanamo survivors lightly. Tragically, forty people still remind imprisoned there today, even though some were ready to be released before the results of our last election. Evidence indicates that their danger to the world was likely entirely exaggerated, so I hope to soon see them welcomed back into it.
As expected, this is a difficult book to read. It contains multiple perspectives and stories from people who worked at Guantanamo, people who were indefinitely imprisoned there, and those who offered them legal counsel. Every piece of information was fact-checked extensively to ensure credibility, and the artists referenced photographs whenever possible. I was aware of some elements of what happened, and continues to happen, to those imprisoned at Guantanamo but I had no idea of the extensity of legal maneuvers required to creative these "detainment centers". Once reading these accounts it is impossible to remain ignorant of the depravity the United States government purposefully allowed in the name of a war that was designed to never end.
Most people my age have no personal memories of 9/11. Yet the racist and Islamophobic anger that perpetuates the violence displayed here is still taught to many in my generation on the basis of honoring the victims of 9/11. They have been presented a purposely skewed view of reality that ignores the terror our own institutions have inflicted on communities in the Middle East. They do not feel the outrage they should when described state-sanction torture methods, because propaganda justifying these acts of unforgivable brutality have been drilled into their minds for almost as long as they've lived. Books such as this one are so important not just because they tell the facts of what has occurred at Guantanamo, but because they return the humanity of these people who have been imprisoned and falsely portrayed as monsters over the course of a generation. Their humanity and trauma should not have to be laid bare for others to feel empathy and anger for them, but ideally, those are the emotions this book will cause anyone who encounters it.
I hope this book is circulated widely and utilized in education curriculums. It took ten years to make its publication a reality and unflinchingly display truths that have been deliberately hidden from or misconstrued to the public over the course of the last eighteen. I do not take the opportunity to read it and listen to the voices of Guantanamo survivors lightly. Tragically, forty people still remind imprisoned there today, even though some were ready to be released before the results of our last election. Evidence indicates that their danger to the world was likely entirely exaggerated, so I hope to soon see them welcomed back into it.