by Robert Fraga
—Martha Bebinger, WBUR
“A powerful first novel—an epic stretching from the civil wars of Liberia to the streets of Rhode Island. A joy to read!”
—Paul J. Stekler, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker
Damnificados
JJ Amaworo Wilson
ISBN: 978-1-62963-117-2
288 pages
Damnificados is loosely based on the real-life occupation of a half-completed skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela, the Tower of David. In this fictional version, six hundred “damnificados”—vagabonds and misfits—take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a rag-tag defensive militia. Their always heroic (and often hilarious) struggle for survival and dignity pits them against corrupt police, the brutal military, and the tyrannical “owners.”
Taking place in an unnamed country at an unspecified time, the novel has elements of magical realism: avenging wolves, biblical floods, massacres involving multilingual ghosts, arrow showers falling to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth, and a trash truck acting as a Trojan horse. The ghosts and miracles woven into the narrative are part of a richly imagined world in which the laws of nature are constantly stretched and the past is always present.
“Should be read by every politician and rich bastard and then force-fed to them—literally, page by page.”
—Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of A Place to Stand
“Two-headed beasts, biblical floods, dragonflies to the rescue—magical realism threads through this authentic and compelling struggle of men and women—the damnificados—to make a home for themselves against all odds. Into this modern, urban, politically familiar landscape of the ‘have-nots’ versus the ‘haves,’ Amaworo Wilson introduces archetypes of hope and redemption that are also deeply familiar—true love, vision quests, the hero’s journey, even the remote possibility of a happy ending. These characters, this place, this dream will stay with you long after you’ve put this book down.”
—Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger
Fire on the Mountain
Terry Bisson
with an introduction by
Mumia Abu-Jamal
ISBN: 978-1-60486-087-0
208 pages
It’s 1959 in socialist Virginia. The Deep South is an independent Black nation called Nova Africa. The second Mars expedition is about to touch down on the red planet. And a pregnant scientist is climbing the Blue Ridge in search of her great-great grandfather, a teenage slave who fought with John Brown and Harriet Tubman’s guerrilla army.
Long unavailable in the US, published in France as Nova Africa, Fire on the Mountain is the story of what might have happened if John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry had succeeded—and the Civil War had been started not by the slave owners but the abolitionists.
“History revisioned, turned inside out … Bisson’s wild and wonderful imagination has taken some strange turns to arrive at such a destination.”
—Madison Smartt Bell, Anisfield-Wolf Award winner and author of Devil’s Dream
“You don’t forget Bisson’s characters, even well after you’ve finished his books. His Fire on the Mountain does for the Civil War what Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle did for World War Two.”
—George Alec Effinger, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for Shrödinger’s Kitten, and author of the Marîd Audran trilogy.
“A talent for evoking the joyful, vertiginous experiences of a world at fundamental turning points.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Few works have moved me as deeply, as thoroughly, as Terry Bisson’s Fire On The Mountain … With this single poignant story, Bisson molds a world as sweet as banana cream pies, and as briny as hot tears.”
—Mumia Abu-Jamal, prisoner and author of Live From Death Row, from the Introduction.
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History
Diana Block
ISBN: 978-1-62963-121-9
256 pages
A radical activist, Luba Gold, makes the difficult decision to go underground to support the Puerto Rican independence movement. When Luba’s collective is targeted by an FBI sting, she escapes with her baby but leaves behind a sensitive envelope that is being safeguarded by a friend. When the FBI come looking for Luba, the friend must decide whether to cooperate in the search for the woman she loves. Ten years later, when Luba emerges from clandestinity, she discovers that the FBI sting was orchestrated by another activist friend who had become an FBI informant. In the changed era of the 1990s, Luba must decide whether to forgive the woman who betrayed her.
Told from the points of view of five different women who cross paths with Luba over four decades, Clandestine Occupations explores the difficult decisions that activists confront about the boundaries of legality and speculates about the scope of clandestine action in the future. It is a thought-provoking reflection on the risks and sacrifices of political activism as well as the damaging reverberations of disaffection and cynicism.
“Clandestine Occupations is a triumph of passion and force. A number of memoirs and other nonfiction works by revolutionaries from the 1970s and ‘80s, including one by Block herself, have given us partial pictures of what a committed life, sometimes lived underground, was like. But there are times when only fiction can really take us there. A marvelous novel that moves beyond all preconceived categories.”
—Margaret Randall, author of Che on My Mind
“Diana Block creates a vivid and engaging tapestry of how political passion interweaves with the intricacies of personal relationships. Clandestine Occupations takes us into the thoughts and feelings of six different women as each, in her own way, grapples with choices about how to live and act in a world rife with oppression but also brightened by rays of humanity and hope.”
—David Gilbert, political prisoner, author of Love and Struggle
Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language
Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater
with a Foreword by John P. Clark
ISBN: 978-1-62963-580-4
224 pages
Following the Zapatista uprising on New Year’s Day 1994, the EZLN communities of Chiapas began the slow process of creating a system of autonomous government that would bring their call for freedom, justice, and democracy from word to reality. Autonomy Is in Our Hearts analyzes this long and arduous process on its own terms, using the conceptual language of Tsotsil, a Mayan language indigenous to the highland Zapatista communities of Chiapas.
The words “Freedom,” “Justice,” and “Democracy” emblazoned on the Zapatista flags are only approximations of the aspirations articulated in the six indigenous languages spoken by the Zapatista communities. They are rough translations of concepts such as ichbail ta muk’ or “mutual recognition and respect among equal persons or peoples,” a’mtel or “collective work done for the good of a community” and lekil kuxlejal or “the life that is good for everyone.” Autonomy Is in Our Hearts provides a fresh perspective on the Zapatistas and a deep engagement with the daily realities of Zapatista autonomous government. Simultaneously an exposition of Tsotsil philosophy and a detailed account of Zapatista governance structures, this book is an indispensable commentary on the Zapatista movement of today.
“This is a refreshing book. Written with the humility of the learner, or the absence of the arrogant knower, the Zapatista dictum to ‘command obeying’ becomes to ‘know learning.’”
—Marisol de la Cadena, author of Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds
Diario De Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico
Peter Kuper, with an introduction
by Martín Solares
ISBN: 978-1-60486-071-9
208 pages
Painting a vivid, personal portrait of social and political upheaval in Oaxaca, Mexico, this unique memoir employs comics, bilingual essays, photos, and sketches to chronicle the events
that unfolded around a teachers’ strike and led to a seven-month siege.
When award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper and his wife and daughter moved to the beautiful 16th-century colonial town of Oaxaca in 2006, they planned to spend a quiet year or two enjoying a different culture and taking a break from the U.S. political climate under the Bush administration. What they hadn’t counted on was landing in the epicenter of Mexico’s biggest political struggle in recent years. Timely and compelling, this extraordinary firsthand account presents a distinct artistic vision of Oaxacan life, from explorations of the beauty of the environment to graphic portrayals of the fight between strikers and government troops that left more than 20 people dead, including American journalist Brad Will.
“Kuper is a colossus; I have been in awe of him for over 20 years. Teachers and students everywhere take heart: Kuper has in these pages born witness to our seemingly endless struggle to educate and to be educated in the face of institutions that really don’t give a damn. In this ruined age we need Kuper’s unsparing compassionate visionary artistry like we need hope.”
—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Peter Kuper is undoubtedly the modern master whose work has refined the socially relevant comic to the highest point yet achieved.”
—Newsarama
“An artist at the top of his form.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca
Edited by Diana Denham
and the C.A.S.A. Collective
ISBN: 978-1-60486-032-0
384 pages
In 2006, Oaxaca, Mexico came alive with a broad and diverse movement that captivated the nation and earned the admiration of communities organizing for social justice around the world. What began as a teachers’ strike demanding more resources for education quickly turned into a massive movement that demanded direct, participatory democracy. Hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans raised their voices against the abuses of the state government. They participated in marches of up to 800,000 people, occupied government buildings, took over radio stations, called for statewide labor and hunger strikes, held sit-ins, reclaimed spaces for public art and created altars for assassinated activists in public spaces. Despite the fierce repression that the movement faced—with hundreds arbitrarily detained, tortured, forced into hiding, or murdered by the state and federal forces and paramilitary death squads—people were determined to make their voices heard. Accompanied by photography and political art, Teaching Rebellion is a compilation of testimonies from longtime organizers, teachers, students, housewives, religious leaders, union members, schoolchildren, indigenous community activists, artists, journalists, and many others who participated in what became the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca. This is a chance to listen directly to those invested in and affected by what quickly became one of the most important social uprisings of the 21st century.
“Teaching Rebellion presents an inspiring tapestry of voices from the recent popular uprisings in Oaxaca. The reader is embraced with the cries of anguish and triumph, indignation and overwhelming joy, from the heart of this living rebellion.”
—Peter Gelderloos, author of How Nonviolence Protects the State
“These remarkable people tell us of the historic teachers’ struggle for justice in Oaxaca, Mexico, and of the larger, hemispheric battle of all Indigenous people to end five hundred years of racism and repression.”
—Jennifer Harbury, author of Truth, Torture, and the American Way
Getting Up for the People: The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca
Contributors: ASARO • Mike Graham de La Rosa • Suzanne M. Schadl
ISBN: 978-1-60486-960-6
128 pages
Getting Up for the People tells the story of the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO) by remixing their own images and words with curatorial descriptions. Part of a long tradition of socially conscious Mexican art, ASARO gives respect to Mexican national icons; but their themes are also global, entering contemporary debates on issues of corporate greed, genetically modified organisms, violence against women, and abuses of natural resources.
In 2006 ASARO formed as part of a broader social movement, part of which advocated for higher teachers’ salaries and access to school supplies. They exercised extralegal means to “get up,” displaying their artwork in public spaces. ASARO stands out for their revitalizing remix of collective social action with modern conventions in graffiti, traditional processes in Mexican printmaking, and contemporary communication through social networking. Now they enjoy international recognition as well as state-sanctioned support for their artists’ workshops. They use their notoriety to teach Oaxacan youth the importance of publicly expressing and exhibiting their perspectives on the visual landscape.
“The Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO) protest and rebel through their art, which follows a tradition established by important Mexican artists of the past including the Mexican Muralists and the Taller de Gráfica Popular. ASARO connects with their artistic and cultural history through a familiar and provocative manner that results in a visual language that is distinctly their own. Getting Up for the People is a significant contribution to the field of graphic arts history, but more than that, it gives light to the vital work of this important artist collective.”
—Theresa Avila, PhD, author of “Laborious Arts: El Taller de Gráfica Popular & the Meaning of Labor in Las Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana”