A New No-Man's-Land

Writing and Art at Guantánamo, Cuba

Esther Whitfield author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Pittsburgh Press

Published:31st Aug '24

£39.00

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A New No-Man's-Land cover

Guantánamo sits at the center of two of the most vexing issues of US policy of the past century: relations with Cuba and the Global War on Terror. It is a contested, extralegal space. In A New No-Man’s-Land, Esther Whitfield explores a multilingual archive of materials produced both at the US naval base and in neighboring Cuban communities and proposes an understanding of Guantánamo as a coherent borderland region, where experiences of isolation are opportunities to find common ground. She analyzes poetry, art, memoirs, and documentary films produced on both sides of the border. Authors and artists include prisoners, guards, linguists, chaplains, lawyers, and journalists, as well as Cuban artists and dissidents. Their work reveals surprising similarities: limited access to power and self-representation, mobility restricted by geography if not captivity, and immersion in political languages that have ascribed them rigid roles. Read together, the work of these disparate communities traces networks that extend among individuals in the Guantánamo region, inward to Cuba, and outward to the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East.

Bringing together archives from the Cuban region of Guant namo and its role in the War on Terror, Whitfield traces intimacies and themes that echo across this fraught space. A New No-Man's-Land's careful analysis of Spanish and Anglophone local and transnational texts offers a vital corrective to singular readings of Guant namo since it first began housing War on Terror detainees in 2002. Be sure to read to the end.--Alexandra S. Moore, Binghamton University

ISBN: 9780822948155

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

216 pages