Note: This essay contains references to multiple forms of state, racial, and gender-based violence. 1 Her comrades called her Red. She may have been born in Chicago or New Orleans as Saundra Cosey, Sandra Lee, Sandra Lane, or possibly Sandra Jones. Gaidi Faraj tells us she was named Saundra Hobson. In her teens, owing to…
This year’s free May Day book—the 11th and last!—is Saidiya Hartman’s Notes for the Riot. It’s a 5 x 7.5 inch, 64-page paperback. The interior has been printed offset on recycled paper and the covers have been stamped in caramel foil on 100-pound Black Licorice stock in an edition of 1,070. Copies will be freely…
This year’s free May Day book is A Message from Home, by virtuoso Miami street photographer Terence C. Price II. It’s a 6.75 x 8.75 inch, 160-page sewn hardback, with an introduction by Zoé Samudzi entitled “Against the Black Sentimental.” We don’t seek to craft an ode to spectacular greatness or inaccessible performances of “excellence,”…
The sixth free May Day book, published May 1, 2017 in an edition of 1,000 copies, was a tête-bêche featuring Assata Shakur’s “Women in Prison: How It Is with Us” and Emma Goldman’s “The Assassination of McKinley.” Download the Assata Shakur half here, or the Emma Goldman half here.
Now available in digital form is 2015’s free May Day book, The Prison Dictionary. It was written by people incarcerated at ERDCC in Bonne Terre, Missouri. From the Introduction: The question remains: Why a “prison dictionary”? Put simply, we feel that the uncommon grouping of people of various ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds within the prison…
Some men have a knack for locating the bullhorns Some men have a knack for locating the podium steps Some men with bullhorns or podiums have lots to say Most men with lots to say have nothing to say All white men at the front of marches for Black Life have lots to say All…
Now available in digital form is 2016’s free May Day book, Premature Death. It features four essays—by Third Coast Conspiracy, Civil Rights Congress, James Boggs, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore—which deal with the concept of “premature death” as that to which white supremacy/racial capitalism expose Black people in America daily. Download it here.
This year’s free May Day book is a compilation entitled Cherish x Abolish. It’s a 6 x 8.5-inch, 256-page paperback featuring Ruth Wilson Gilmore, bell hooks, Dev Hynes, Gilles Bertin, Kuwasi Balagoon, Toni Morrison, Zoé Samudzi, Jean Weir, Willem Van Spronsen, Michael Kimble, EZLN, Black Panther Party, Jean Genet, George Jackson, Kanno Sugako, Marilyn Buck,…
I remember when, a few years ago, friends in Ypsilanti, who are Nigerian, told me they were thinking of moving to Saline. “Please don’t,” I said, and I told them how I’d just been regaled by stories from an elderly friend who used to work at the Ford plant there, about how there was an…
Amos Kennedy, Amerikkka’s baddest letterpress artist, is rehabbing a shop in Detroit into a new home for his printing operation and letterpress school. Chip the f*ck in! And enjoy this promo video:
black-ink.info 