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Guantánamo, Cuba: Poetry and Prison on Divided Ground

Guantánamo, Cuba: Poetry and Prison on Divided Ground Guantánamo as a site whose legal contortions and human rights abuses have global reach and urgency has long been the focus of the many scholars, lawyers, and activists who have fought to keep its detention centers in the public eye. And yet, alongside advocates who have insisted on the site’s urgent moral ties to the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the international community broadly defined—and in defiance of both a US war on “terror” and a Cuban war on “imperialism”—there have persisted smaller-scale gestures aimed at situating the Guantánamo naval base as geographically continuous with, and affectively connected to, Cuba. This article reads the poetry of Mohammed el Gharani and Ibrahim al-Rubaish, former detainees included in Marc Falkoff’s collection Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, and of José Ramón Sánchez, longtime resident of the Cuban city of Guantánamo, as a form of regional literature produced on contested ground. It proposes that, when read across the dividing line and between languages, poetry presents a more intimate and locally specific Guantánamo than the widely known version. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Guantánamo, Cuba: Poetry and Prison on Divided Ground

Whitfield, Esther
Comparative Literature , Volume 72 (3) – Sep 1, 2020
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Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-8255339
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Guantánamo as a site whose legal contortions and human rights abuses have global reach and urgency has long been the focus of the many scholars, lawyers, and activists who have fought to keep its detention centers in the public eye. And yet, alongside advocates who have insisted on the site’s urgent moral ties to the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the international community broadly defined—and in defiance of both a US war on “terror” and a Cuban war on “imperialism”—there have persisted smaller-scale gestures aimed at situating the Guantánamo naval base as geographically continuous with, and affectively connected to, Cuba. This article reads the poetry of Mohammed el Gharani and Ibrahim al-Rubaish, former detainees included in Marc Falkoff’s collection Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, and of José Ramón Sánchez, longtime resident of the Cuban city of Guantánamo, as a form of regional literature produced on contested ground. It proposes that, when read across the dividing line and between languages, poetry presents a more intimate and locally specific Guantánamo than the widely known version.

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2020

References

  • In Our Prison on the Sea
    Adayfi, Mansoor
  • The Problem of Speaking for Others
    Alcoff, Linda
  • How US Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds
    Apuzzo, Matt Fink, Sheri Risen, James
  • At the United Nations General Assembly
    Castro, Fidel Deutschmann, David Shnookal, Deborah
  • CNN Live Event/Special: White House Briefing
  • Piñera y profecía
    del Risco, Enrique
  • Cuba’s Cold War Foreign Policy in the Middle East: From Agitator to Mediator
    Grantham, David
  • Inter-American Obversals: Allen Ginsburg and Haroldo de Campos, circa 1960
    Greene, Roland Jackson, Virgina Prins, Yopie
  • Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental)
    Guevara, Ernesto Deutschmann, David
  • The Guantánamo Docket
  • The Guantánamo Testimonials Project
  • ‘Extraordinary Renditions’: Tales of Guantánamo
    Harlow, Barbara
  • Fidel Castro: The Palestinian Connection
    Hatuqa, Dalia
  • Landscape, Femininity, and Caribbean Discourse
    Heller, Ben
  • Where is Guantánamo?
    Kaplan, Amy
  • ‘We Will Load Up Guantanamo with Some Bad Dudes’ -Donald Trump
    Lomas, Claire
  • Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry
    Miller, Flagg Falkoff, Marc
  • Modernismo e identidad en Julián del Casal y José Martí: Cuba en la encrucijada finisecular
    Morán, Francisco
  • Remarks by the President at the National Defense University
    Obama, Barack
  • Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay
  • Proclamation by the National Assembly of People’s Power of the Republic of Cuba
  • La isla en peso
    Piñera, Virgilo
  • Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth, and Politics
    Pinter, Harold
  • On the Weight of Insular Flesh
    Quiroga, José Molloy, Sylvia Irwin, Robert
  • Reboot Gitmo for US-Cuba Research Diplomacy
    Roman, Joe Kraska, James
  • ‘La flecha negra,’ ‘Los quilos,’ ‘Imposible,’ ‘Castillos de miseria,’ ‘Un caballo de Troya en el Caribe.’
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • Secret//Noforn//20330602
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • Short Message
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • ‘Yaumni,’ ‘La vaca,’ ‘Re: No Subject.’
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • US Drone Kills a Top Figure in Al Qaeda’s Yemen Branch
    Shane, Scott
  • Vanishing Points: When Narrative Is Not Simply There
    Slaughter, Joseph R.
  • The Enemy Combatant as Poet: The Politics of Writing in Poems from Guantánamo
    Trapp, Erin
  • Reading the Redacted
    Voyce, Stephen
  • Terra Incognita: Mapping the Detention Center in Edwige Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and the US Supreme Court Ruling Boumediene v. Bush
    Waller, Nicole
  • Cuban Borderlands: Local Stories of the Guantánamo Naval Base
    Whitfield, Esther
  • Poetry and Politics at Guantánamo: An Interview with Marc Falkoff, Editor of Poems from Guantánamo; The Detainees Speak
    Worthington, Andy
  • In Our Prison on the Sea
    Adayfi, Mansoor
  • The Problem of Speaking for Others
    Alcoff, Linda
  • How US Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds
    Apuzzo, Matt Fink, Sheri Risen, James
  • At the United Nations General Assembly
    Castro, Fidel Deutschmann, David Shnookal, Deborah
  • CNN Live Event/Special: White House Briefing
  • Piñera y profecía
    del Risco, Enrique
  • Cuba’s Cold War Foreign Policy in the Middle East: From Agitator to Mediator
    Grantham, David
  • Inter-American Obversals: Allen Ginsburg and Haroldo de Campos, circa 1960
    Greene, Roland Jackson, Virgina Prins, Yopie
  • Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental)
    Guevara, Ernesto Deutschmann, David
  • The Guantánamo Docket
  • The Guantánamo Testimonials Project
  • ‘Extraordinary Renditions’: Tales of Guantánamo
    Harlow, Barbara
  • Fidel Castro: The Palestinian Connection
    Hatuqa, Dalia
  • Landscape, Femininity, and Caribbean Discourse
    Heller, Ben
  • Where is Guantánamo?
    Kaplan, Amy
  • ‘We Will Load Up Guantanamo with Some Bad Dudes’ -Donald Trump
    Lomas, Claire
  • Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry
    Miller, Flagg Falkoff, Marc
  • Modernismo e identidad en Julián del Casal y José Martí: Cuba en la encrucijada finisecular
    Morán, Francisco
  • Remarks by the President at the National Defense University
    Obama, Barack
  • Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay
  • Proclamation by the National Assembly of People’s Power of the Republic of Cuba
  • La isla en peso
    Piñera, Virgilo
  • Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth, and Politics
    Pinter, Harold
  • On the Weight of Insular Flesh
    Quiroga, José Molloy, Sylvia Irwin, Robert
  • Reboot Gitmo for US-Cuba Research Diplomacy
    Roman, Joe Kraska, James
  • ‘La flecha negra,’ ‘Los quilos,’ ‘Imposible,’ ‘Castillos de miseria,’ ‘Un caballo de Troya en el Caribe.’
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • Secret//Noforn//20330602
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • Short Message
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • ‘Yaumni,’ ‘La vaca,’ ‘Re: No Subject.’
    Sánchez, José Ramón
  • US Drone Kills a Top Figure in Al Qaeda’s Yemen Branch
    Shane, Scott
  • Vanishing Points: When Narrative Is Not Simply There
    Slaughter, Joseph R.
  • The Enemy Combatant as Poet: The Politics of Writing in Poems from Guantánamo
    Trapp, Erin
  • Reading the Redacted
    Voyce, Stephen
  • Terra Incognita: Mapping the Detention Center in Edwige Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying and the US Supreme Court Ruling Boumediene v. Bush
    Waller, Nicole
  • Cuban Borderlands: Local Stories of the Guantánamo Naval Base
    Whitfield, Esther
  • Poetry and Politics at Guantánamo: An Interview with Marc Falkoff, Editor of Poems from Guantánamo; The Detainees Speak
    Worthington, Andy