Today in Labor History March 29, 1797: William Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft. Godwin was an English journalist, philosopher and novelist. And one of the first modern proponents of anarchism. His most famous books are “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” and “Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams,” a mystery novel that attacks aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, and is regarded by many as one of the founding feminist philosophers. Her most famous book was “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
THE GREAT MIAMI NOVEL may well be this devastating blend of satire, magical realism, and local history—the story of a wannabe gangster and the imprisoned orca that fascinates him. Startling, distinctive, surreal. A MINUS
I read Bob Mortimer's 'Satsuma Complex'. It is a cute book, silly, funny and very readable. It is also a book about loneliness and the need for imagination to create connection. I liked it. It reminded me a little of #DouglasAdams, though kinder
The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the waffle house, The Pequod, for Moby Dick, the giant white waffle that was more than he could chew.
Today in Labor History March 25, 1931: The authorities arrested the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama and charged them with rape. The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American youths, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused of raping two white women. A lynch mob tried to murder them before they had even been indicted. All-white juries convicted each of them. Several judges gave death sentences, a common practice in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women. The Communist Party and the NAACP fought to get the cases appealed and retried. Finally, after numerous retrials and years in harsh prisons, four of the Scottsboro Boys were acquitted and released. The other five were got sentences ranging from 75 years to death. All were released or escaped by 1946. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes wrote it in his work Scottsboro Limited. And Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son was influenced by the case.
HIGH-INTENSITY FANTASY THRILLER recasts werewolf myths through a lens of female empowerment, and the result is a heist adventure led by two unforgettable young women/wolves. Sharp writing and evocations of hardscrabble backwoods life. A MINUS
Today in Labor History March 19, 1742: Tupac Amaru was born. Tupac Amaru II had led a large Andean uprising against the Spanish. As a result, he became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and in the indigenous rights movement. The Tupamaros revolutionary movement in Uruguay (1960s-1970s) took their name from him. As did the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary guerrilla group, in Peru, and the Venezuelan Marxist political party Tupamaro. American rapper, Tupac Amaru Shakur, was also named after him. Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a poem called “Tupac Amaru (1781).” And Clive Cussler’s book, “Inca Gold,” has a villain who claims to be descended from the revolutionary leader.
TWO MAGICAL OUTCASTS join forces on a quest to discover a lake of mystical power. Vividly drawn fantasy set in a fascinating world offers memorable characters. B PLUS
Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.
The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
Today in Labor History March 11, 1850: French anarchist Clément Duval was born. His theory of individual reclamation, which justified theft, and other crimes, as both educational and legitimate ways to redistribute the wealth, influenced the Illegalists of the 1910s, including Jules Bonnot, of the Bonnot Gang. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon."
A yellow-back or yellowback is a cheap #Novel which was published in Britain in the second half of the #19thCentury. They were occasionally called "mustard-plaster" novels.[1]
Ch.30 of my hard #scifi#SpaceOpera is released! The mental state of much of the crew reaches an all-time low. As I stated before, the last few jumps were a meatgrinder, previously physical and now emotional. Now the end is approaching. Will they manage to reach their destination while remaining sane?
Last normal chapter. Next update will have the ending + epilogue. No deadline.
Today in Labor History March 8, 1971: The Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI stole 1,000 documents from the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They later released the documents to newspapers, revealing the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which harassed, imprisoned & murdered US political dissidents. According to Noam Chomsky, 40% of the documents were dedicated to political surveillance. James Ellroy wrote about the burglary in his 2009 novel, “Blood’s a Rover.”
Today in Labor History March 5, 1917: Members of the IWW went on trial in Everett, Washington for the Everett Massacre, which occurred on November 5, 1916. In reality, they were the victims of an assault by a mob of drunken, vigilantes, led by Sheriff McRae. The IWW members had come to support the 5-month long strike by shingle workers. When their boat, the Verona, arrived, the Sheriff asked who their leader was. They replied, “We are all leaders.” Then the vigilantes began firing at their boat. They killed 12 IWW members and 2 of their own, who they accidentally shot in the back. Before the killings, 40 IWW street speakers had been taken by deputies to Beverly Park, where they were brutally beaten and run out of town. In his “USA” trilogy, John Dos Passos mentions Everett as “no place for the working man.” And Jack Kerouac references the Everett Massacre in his novel, “Dharma Bums.”
ACTION-PACKED SPACE OPERA draws on astrophysics and the mythology of Ancient Egypt to create a memorable tale. Fresh, original, well crafted science fiction! B PLUS
Just finished 'I was an elephant salesman' by Pap Khouma. I read it because the author is a friend's uncle. It is a reasonable worm's eye view of a Senegalese migrant's experience in mid 80s Italy. The narrative voice of the first few chapters is excellent, but having set up an interesting character who is looking back on the travails of his younger self and full of things to say about Senegal, Italy, France and Germany we get a rather breathless account of a few years of selling. This is a shame. There is a bravura moment in which the sudden death of a friend is recounted. It is readable, full of insight but ultimately a failure of a novel (or translation).
FUNNY, SAD, SILLY, wise novel about the end of a long relationship and what comes after that. Strong characterizations and a distinctive voice take this a level or two above the ordinary. B PLUS
The 29th chapter of my hard #scifi#SpaceOpera is released! This is the penultimate "normal" chapter, most likely. In it, some loose ends about the book's worldbuilding are tied, and a plot point from many chapters ago is finally resolved. While the tension is lower, the heat is still rising...
BLEAK, STUNNING ALTERNATE HISTORY, set in a US where white male supremacy is de jure as well as de facto the norm, intertwines the stories of a brilliant young Black woman seeking freedom and her 19th century ancestor. A MINUS