Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and graphic violence.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This operates at the intersection of memoir and political nonfiction, a hybrid form that has gained prominence in contemporary literature. This genre fusion allows El Akkad to weave personal experiences with broader political analysis, creating a narrative that examines both individual and largescale impacts of policies.

The memoir elements of El Akkad’s work draw from his personal history: He was born in Egypt, raised in Qatar, and later immigrated to Canada before settling in the United States. This transnational perspective informs his observations of Western societies. El Akkad employs memoir conventions by recounting formative experiences from his childhood and adolescence, including his family’s migration journey and encounters with discrimination. He also includes anecdotes from his career as a journalist covering conflict zones.

These personal narratives serve multiple functions within the text. They establish El Akkad’s proximity to the events and issues he describes, from censorship in Qatar to reporting from war zones in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. They also humanize abstract political concepts by demonstrating their real-world impacts on individuals and families. Furthermore, by sharing his own journey of disillusionment with Western ideals—ideals he once embraced—El Akkad creates a narrative arc that mirrors the broader political themes of this essay collection.

El Akkad embeds this personal narrative within a framework of political analysis that critiques Western foreign policy, media representations of conflict, and the moral contradictions he perceives in liberal democratic societies. This political nonfiction component incorporates elements of investigative journalism, political theory, and cultural criticism. El Akkad questions institutional responses to moral crises, explores forms of resistance against systemic injustice, and examines how language shapes narratives about violence.

Rather than presenting abstract political theory, El Akkad grounds his analysis in concrete events and examples, particularly focusing on the Israeli military campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. He examines media coverage, political speeches, and public discourse around these events to illustrate broader patterns of what he views as hypocrisy and moral failure. His analysis extends beyond this specific conflict to examine the structures of power that enable violence and shape how it is perceived and justified.

This blending of memoir and political nonfiction creates a work that resists conventional genre categorization. The personal narrative provides emotional context for the political analysis, while the political framework gives individual experiences broader significance. This approach follows in the tradition of writers like James Baldwin, Edward Said, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who also use their personal experiences as entry points to wider political and social critique.

The hybrid form also reflects El Akkad’s professional background, which spans both journalism and literature. As a former war correspondent who later became a novelist, he combines the investigative methods of journalism with the narrative techniques of fiction. This combination allows him to present factual information while also maintaining a narrative structure. Through this genre blend, El Akkad creates a work that invites both intellectual and emotional engagement.