(Left) This is a traditional Somali ship known as a beden. Traditionally, the planks are sewn together with coconut fiber instead of hammered with nails. Did you know ancient Somalia had a maritime empire?

(Right) Galway hooker, from Galway Ireland. The original cloth sails were treated with a solution made from treebark to protect them from rot, which just so happened to turn the sails their iconic rusty red color, and modern synthetic sailcloth is dyed to imitate this.

(Left) Viking boats (amongst others) were built with the planks overlapping (clinker) instead of being flush (carvel) this provides flexibility for the boat to bend instead of break in rough seas but still maintains strength.

(Right) a Māori waka taua (decorated war canoe). This particular one is Ngā Toki, and it previously held the world record for longest canoe at 123 feet long and 6 1/2 wide).

Four more that I know less about:

(Left) Haida dugout canoe.

(Right) Vietnamese Ghe Nang.

(Left) An Unangax baidarka.

Some of that “deviance,” without doubt, consisted of real violence committed by men against women. But much of it was simply nonreproductive sexuality.18 Within the frame of “modern Babylon,” sex work, extramarital sex, intoxication, porn, rape, child abuse, queer cruising, and pregnancy out of wedlock all came to seem like gender evils more or less of a piece.19 Organized British and American womanhood had always figured prominently in anti-prostitution efforts.20 But in the half-century between 1871 and 1921, a nexus of specifically feminist forces coalesced around the “slavery” of waged, extrafamilial sexual labor. In the Chinatowns of the New World’s West Coast, suffragists like Rose Livingston mounted vast saviorist enterprises to “rescue” Chinese women from their jobs in brothels.21 Two Woman’s Christian Temperance Union mstalwarts declared in 1907, confusingly, that “practically all the Chinese prostitutes in the United States are literal slaves. Some are willing slaves, some unwilling.”22

As this slippery elision implies, the not-always-white so-called white slavery epidemic was a phantom social emergency in which untold numbers of girls (newly economically active, vulnerable, and virginal) were pictured squirming in foreign men’s lecherous hands—ruined, debauched, and somehow “lost.” In the initial years of the Butlerite antiregulation campaign, there were times when more liberatory feminist discourses than this “were able to dominate and structure discourse on sex,”23 or so Walkowitz contends. When Butler’s anti-state rage was on top, cops, politicians, judges, doctors, and the army took a lot of the heat for women’s collective unfreedom and poverty. But, notes Walkowitz, “this anger was easily diverted into repressive campaigns against male vice and sexual variation.” In short order, Butlerism was declawed.

Related devolutions were occurring everywhere. According to the scholars Ellen DuBois and Linda Gordon, the campaign to raise the sexual age of consent “had a radical moment: it communicated an accurate critique of the limitations of ‘consent’ by women in a male-dominated society.”24 Yet by the end of the century, age-of-consent legislation denied women the right to heterosexual activity until they were either adults or married (which, by the way, they could be at any age). Feminists had actively fostered hostility to the sex lives of girls. In so doing, they had helped create a new class of female offender, who soon filled the reformatories: the juvenile (pre- or post-pubescent) sex delinquent.

[…] Just as temperance allowed women to blame something (booze) for male violence other than marriage and the institution of the private nuclear household, the focus on prostitution, too, was a focus on extrafamilial evil. As such, even the least carceral neo-abolitionists’ obsession with the victimization of the prostitute was, in the end, conservative, and unable to transcend the sexual morality bifurcating women into the groups respectable and fallen. Even the best of them failed to understand that many prostitutes wanted to be neither rescued nor rehabilitated. They “clung fast to the idea that some kinds of sex were inherently criminal,” DuBois and Gordon conclude, “and they were confounded by the existence of unrepentant whores.”27

The New Abolitionists were all also undeniably switching focus with amazing speed away from Black oppression—under the pretense that that was now pretty much solved—over to the racially unmarked (that is, tacitly white) female subjugation they located in the sphere of sex crimes (where Black women once again didn’t really exist as victims). This maneuver didn’t really “de-race” prostitution—the word “white” was there from the jump—so much as de-sex chattel slavery, implicitly rewriting the history of the plantation as an experience of simple labor rather than one involving forced breeding and rape. A moral panic about non-white procurers and traffickers, merging with fears of miscegenation and white genocide, spread like a rash.

Jones, Clint, "Black Sails as Philosophy: Pirates and Political Discourse"

Myrvang, Olav Kjetil, "Because I don’t want to be a pirate" - A Contextual Study of the Representation of Long John Silver in Treasure Island and Black Sails

Carcas, Leyres, “HETEROBAITING”: BLACK SAILS AND THE SUBVERSION OF QUEERBAITING TROPES

Schneider, Elisabeth, "RECLAIMING QUEERBAITING: A CALL TO ACTION"

Friedrich, Kathrin, "‘Evil Heroes’ in Black Sails – A Case Study: How Character Complexity and Nonverbal Actions Invite Positive Viewer Responses"

Razman, D. C. (2020) “Black Sails, Rainbow Flag: Examining Queer Representations in Film and Television” [click for pdf]

Srividhya Swaminathan, (2017) “The New Cinematic Piracy: Crossbones and Black Sails” (in ‘The Cinematic Eighteen Century: History, Culture, and Adaptation’ (2017, 1st ed.) edited by Srividhya Swaminathan and Steven W. Thomas)

Dirksen, S.J. (2019) “Constructing the Identity of the Popular Pirate: The Outlaw, Marginal Identities, and Utopia in Black Sails (2014-2017) and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)”

Min-Chi Chen (2024) “Weaponizing Monstrosity: Starz’s Black Sails and the Power of Monstrous Narrative” (in Chapter 2 of ‘Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability’, 23, 2024, edited by Yeojin Kim, Shane Carreon)

Jessica Walker “Civilization’s Monsters: The Doomed Queer Anti-Imperialism of Black Sails” (in ‘Pirates in History and Popular Culture’ (2018) edited by Antonio Sanna) [entire book in pdf]

Anarchy Works + Anarchist FAQ

African American Anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War

Explaining the demise of the Black Panther Party: The role of internal factors — Ollie Johnson

Interview with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin from 1995

Anarchism and the Black Revolution — Lorenzo Kom'boa

Remembering Martin Sostre

Maroon: Kuwasi Balagoon and the Evolution of Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchism

Anarchy Can’t Fight Alone – Kuwasi Balagoon

Ojore Lutaro

“In My Own Words” Interview — Ojore Lutaro (video)

“In My Own Words” (2021) Interview — Ojore Lutaro

Interview with Anarchist Former BLA-Member Ashanti Alston

Speaking of anarchism, racism and black liberation — Kom'boa Irving

Interview with Ernesto Aguilar of the Anarchist People of Color (APOC)

Anarkata — Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas

Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front: What is the ZACF?

An Ethiopian Anarchist Perspective on the War in Tigray

An interview with Nigerian anarchist Sam Mbah

How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks

The Anarchism of Blackness

"I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.

Oh, it's lovely to be invited to participate in Futurological Congress where Systems Science displays its grand apocalyptic graphs, to be asked to tell the newspapers what America will be like in 2001, and all that, but it's a terrible mistake. I write science fiction, and science fiction isn't about the future. I don't know any more about the future than you do, and very likely less.

(i believe he currently has no estate or family that can profit from his works, as the last owner of the estate was his landlady who recently died.)

James baldwin online archive with his articles and photo archives.

---NOVELS---

Giovanni's room"When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. This book introduces love's fascinating possibilities and extremities."

Go Tell It On The Mountain"(...)Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves."

+bonus: film adaptation on youtube. (if you’re a giancarlo esposito fan, you’ll be delighted to see him in an early preacher role)

Another Country and Going to Meet the Man Another country: "James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit." Going to meet the Man: " collection of eight short stories by American writer James Baldwin. The book, dedicated "for Beauford Delaney", covers many topics related to anti-Black racism in American society, as well as African-American–Jewish relations, childhood, the creative process, criminal justice, drug addiction, family relationships, jazz, lynching, sexuality, and white supremacy."

Just Above My Head"Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land."

If Beale Street Could Talk"Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche."

also has a film adaptation by moonlight's barry jenkins

Tell Me How Long the Train's been gone At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. 

---ESSAYS---

Baldwin essay collection. Including most famously: notes of a native son, nobody knows my name, the fire next time, no name in the street, the devil finds work- baldwin on film

--DOCUMENTARIES--

Take this hammer, a tour of san Francisco.

Meeting the man

--DEBATES:--

Debate with Malcolm x, 1963 ( on integration, the nation of islam, and other topics. )

Debate with William Buckley, 1965. ( historic debate in america. )

Heavily moderated debate with Malcolm x, Charles Eric Lincoln, and Samuel Schyle 1961. (Primarily Malcolm X's debate on behalf of the nation of islam, with Baldwin giving occassional inputs.)

----

dante in translation

philosophy and the science of human nature

frontiers and controversies in astrophysics

modern poetry

ancient greek history for those of you who haven’t picked up a real book since you read percy jackson

totally legit question that everyone has when starting out! different places are different levels of strict wrt cover letters, but here's a template i use for everything:

Dear ["editors" or editors' name(s)] I am writing to submit [PIECE(S)' TITLES, word/poem count] to be considered for publication in [MAG NAME]. [Specify whether or not they are under simultaneous consideration elsewhere and/or previously published]. [Specify any content warnings needed for the pieces - do *not* summarize your submission, just do CWs] Thanks in advance for your time and I look forward to hearing from you. Warmly, [NAME] [Bio: (50-100 words with your name, affiliation(s), previous publications, interests, location, anything you deem relevant)]