Guantanamo Voices

Guantanamo Voices

Sarah Mirk, ed

Omar el Akkad, intro

Abrams Comic Arts, Sep 8, 2020

208 pages

Comic/Graphic novels/nonfiction

Edelweiss

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The cover is colorful and spectacularly eye-catching. I love the catchline they used “TRUE ACCOUNTS from the world’s most INFAMOUS PRISON”. Yup, it certainly makes you want to pick this up and read it!

The whole book is done in a spectacular graphic comic style similar to that on the cover. The editor gathered several graphic artists to do the job and then used one colorist for the whole book so that there would be an overall color scheme throughout to tie things together. The artists’ styles work quite well together to create a clear and unvarnished picture of what the story is surrounding this infamous place. The editor has done her research well and pulled the story together so that it is coherent and as unemotional as such a thing can be while still making it a story about human beings in a horrible place being treated inhumanly without recourse to representation or possibility of release. Some of these are vicious criminals, but some of these are innocent people caught up in the collection of the others.

I served four and a half years in the US Navy and some of it was served in DC at the time this was all blowing up in the news initially. That was so long ago. It is certainly time for this whole thing to be cleared up and shut down. Perhaps, if enough people read this book and take it to heart, something may get done. This would be a good one to read and pass on. Recommended.