My Guantanamo Diary
The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me
Khan, Mahvish Rukhsana
Hardcover
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BOOK SUMMARY
Who exactly has America detained all these years at Guantanamo? The Worst of the Worst? Or the Wretched of the Earth?
BOOK SYNOPSIS
Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away.
For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage—as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan's story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is —and who we are.
AUTHOR BIO
Mahvish Khan is a recent law school graduate and journalist. She has been published in the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media. She lives in San Diego.
BOOK REVIEWS
Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review, August 10, 2008
“Once you know the endings to Khan’s stories, they read like the gripping narratives of the wrongly accused…. Khan captures the bizarre culture of Guantanamo, where lawyers struggle to represent their clients…. Her first-person accounts of detainee abuse by American soldiers are gut-wrenching.… My Guantanamo Diary provides a valuable account of what we can now recognize as one of the most shameful episodes in the war on terror. It is hard to read this book without a growing sense of embarrassment and indignation.”
Washington Post, August 28, 2008“My Guantanamo Diary joins such indispensable documents as Murat Kurnaz’s Five Years of My Life in chronicling events behind the thick secrecy surrounding the prison…. Her contribution here is to show us the humanity of those who have been waiting for years—often in conditions that drive humans beings mad—to learn what they are accused of and when, if ever, they might be released. These stories will sink permanently into the reader’s consciousness.”
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MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 1586484982
ISBN(13-digit): 9781586484989
Dewey Decimal: 909.83/1
Library of Congress: 2008274233
Book Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 302
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