These Racist Collectibles Will Make Your Skin Crawl

By Dave Gilson
Mother Jones Magazine
March/April 2016

And they’re still being made.

DAVID PILGRIM bought his first piece of racist memorabilia in the early 1970s, when he was a youngster in Mobile, Alabama. It was a set of salt and pepper shakers meant to caricature African Americans. "I purchased it and broke it" on purpose, recalls Pilgrim, who is black. Yet over the next few decades, he amassed a sizable collection of what he calls "contemptible collectibles"—once-common household objects and products that mock and stereotype black people.

In 1996, Pilgrim transformed his 3,200-item collection into the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Michigan's Ferris State University, where he teaches sociology. He presents a selection of these appalling objects and images in his new book, Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice. As the title implies, the book isn't merely an exercise in shock value. It lays out the philosophy behind Pilgrim's work as a scholar and an activist: that only by acknowledging these artifacts and their persistence in American culture can we honestly confront our not-so-distant past.

Mother Jones: What made you decide to turn your collection into a museum?

David Pilgrim: When I got to Michigan, someone mentioned that they knew this elderly black woman who was an antiques dealer. After many months, she agreed to let me see her personal collection. It was just objects floor to ceiling in a barnlike structure. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume. It shook me! I thought I'd seen everything. What she had was a testimony to—this is going to sound weird—not just the creativity of racism, but the diversity in it. I remember that day thinking that I wanted to do what she'd done, but in a different way.

MJ: How popular were these collectibles?

DP: They were everyday objects in a lot of people's homes, including African Americans'. [The antiques collector] had postcards, posters. She had records, 78s. She had ashtrays. She had a racist bell. I think she had the game called Chopped Up Niggers—it's a puzzle. She told me that she hadn't paid very much for many of those pieces because at the time people were throwing stuff away. Some people were ashamed.

MJ: Why own them in the first place?

DP: These toys, games, sheet music about "coons" and "darkies"—all these millions, and I mean literally millions, of objects—were integral to maintaining Jim Crow. Jim Crow could not work without violence, real violence, but also the threat of violence and the depiction of violence. There are a number of games in the museum where you throw things at black people: "hit the nigger" or "hit the Negro" games. If you had such a game, you were actually creating safe spaces to do that.

MJ: Do you also keep track of racist images and memorabilia online?

DP: Absolutely. With the power of the internet and social media, one person can do the damage that in the old days it took many to do. When you have a race-based incident—and I make it my business to look—within one week there are material objects that reflect that incident in a racist way: lunch boxes, posters, puzzles, T-shirts, pillows. President Obama has been an industry for racist objects. He has been portrayed as a witch doctor, a Rastus character from Cream of Wheat, as a Sambo, as an Uncle Tom—and also as gay, as transgender, as communist, as socialist, as a terrorist, as a Muslim. [Many of the] images that appear online are old. The images from the old "coon" songs from the late 1800s and early 1900s show up in memes, and people don't realize they're older images.

MJ: What sort of people collect this stuff?

DP: There are some who want to educate. I've met collectors who collect to destroy the pieces. But by far the biggest segment are speculators who know that a McCoy cookie jar was $3 and you can get several hundred dollars for it now.

MJ: Do you see a role for your collection in today's movement for racial equality?

DP: One of the questions I get often is why we're still having these conversations. And my answer is: The objects are still being made, they're still being sold and distributed. There's not an image in the museum that's not being reproduced in some way. Secondly, the reason we still have these discussions is because race still matters. But Americans don't often talk about it in places where their ideas are challenged. We want our museum to be safe but uncomfortable.

MJ: I found myself hiding your book from my kids. At what age do you think it's okay to expose children to this stuff?

DP: I believe that young people—8, 9, 10—should have discussions appropriate to their age about race. But no one under 12 can come into the museum by themselves, and we discourage parents from bringing them. Right in the center of the room is a lynching tree. Even though it's contextualized, it can be a house of horrors.

 

Buy book now | Buy e-Book now | Back to Dr. David Pilgrim's Author Page

Leon Rosselson’s Where are the Barricades reviewed in The Australian

By Mahir Ali
The Australian
February 6th, 2016

4 stars

It is entirely appropriate that Leon Rosselson’s final album should include several examples of what he does best. The title song, aptly prefaced with a blast from the past called Full Marks for Charlie (as in Marx, rather than Chaplin), is a response to the global financial crisis that was composed before the Occupy movement reared its head. “Robespierre is wagging his finger,” it begins, “Karl Marx is scratching his head / They ought to be shooting the bankers / But they’re giving them money instead.” Looters, meanwhile, relates the London riots of 2011 to the dismal history of the British Empire, concluding: “Looting, a great British pastime / The upper classes loot by stealth / Bankers, tycoons, City gamblers / Siphon off the nation’s wealth / Centuries of high-class looting / Payback time is overdue / Hyde Park, Kensington and Knightsbridge / Watch out! Next time it could be you.”

In his more than 50 years as a singer-songwriter who has impressed critics more than the record-buying public, provocation has been Rosselson’s forte, albeit not exclusively in the sphere of politics. One of his greatest accomplishments lies in giving voice to the hopes and dreams of the voiceless, often eccentrics and outcasts who prosper or wither at a tangent from society.

The song Benefits portrays someone who “cheats” what’s left of the welfare state by using his vegetable patch to grow flowers instead. I’m Going Where the Suits Will Shine My Shoes, delivered in three different voices, with long-time collaborators Janet Russell and Roy Bailey pitching in, encapsulates the wishful thinking of the dispossessed. Dispossession also surfaces as a regular theme in Rosselson’s reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As someone who once saw himself as a socialist Zionist but eventually found himself philosophically estranged from the Israeli state, he has frequently focused on parallels between the persecution of European Jews in the 1930s and that of the Palestinians since 1948, and The Ballad of Rivka and Mohammed poignantly pinpoints his concerns. Over the decades, Rosselson has regularly been referred to by critics as an outstanding songwriter, and he has long been esteemed within the folk fraternity, with the likes of Martin Carthy and Frankie Armstrong serving as regular collaborators. The fact that fame and fortune have passed him by arguably testifies to his authenticity as an artist who took his cues from Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel rather than Ewan MacColl. It is not particularly surprising that someone with Rosselson’s wit, erudition and sense of history has troubled the charts only once, with Ballad of a Spycatcher, recorded with Billy Bragg and the Oyster Band, back in 1987, or that his The World Turned Upside Down is often misconstrued as a 17th-century folk song. At 81, Rosselson has every right to call it a day. But his singing and songwriting has always been a calling rather than a career, which would suggest this album may not be quite the end of the story.

Buy CD now  | Back to artist homepage

West of Eden reviewed in Slingshot Magazine

By A. Iwasa
Slingshot Magazine
January 2016

Coming out of what started as the Communes Project, a collaborative effort between the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the Mendocino Institute in 2003, this book is a striking example of the radical potential to utilize the resources of academia when people make a point of making them accessible to the general public.

Communes are placed historically both in the broader sense of general Utopian history, and the more particular focus of the book revolving around the 1968 social upheavals.

Fantastic chapters on the Native American occupation of Alcatraz and communalism in the black Panther Party work to dispel the myth of communal living as a white people thing.

Prominent also are back to the land projects such as the Morning Star and Black Bear Ranches. First hand accounts abound, and sources are extremely well cited for those interested in following up. The ongoing legacies of the communes and the people involved are also addressed from the pot economy to high tech industry.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in communal living, especially those now who think our much smaller and tamer communal living movement, or lack there of, is The Revolution. We’ve got a long way to go to rebuild what was, and the lessons we can learn from past efforts should be studied in works like this.

I think virtually every commune dweller past and present could fill a book this size alone with great stories fun and sad, economic and historical.  All these sorts of details are very important, and the editors were great about never getting stuck on any of the specifics.

On a personal level, I was able to make it in the Bay Area from Slingshot 119 to 120′s editing largely because of a communal living situation I was able to get into on my credentials as a member of the Slingshot Collective doing research on the topic.  Almost every place I’ve lived since I moved out of my mother’s house For The Last Time back in 2003 has been some sort of collective, so the topic is very dear to my heart.

I made a specific point of getting our review copy at the Howard Zinn Book Fair from PM Press because of this, and even though it’s a little old, Ramsey didn’t hesitate to donate it to us.  It would be great to see more work like this, both about the 1960s and ’70s, and the time since then which has been fascinating in its own ways.

Buy this book now | Download e-Book now | Back to Cal Winslow's Page | Back to Iain Boal's Page

No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries in Antipode

by Adam J. Barker
Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography
February 2016

It is not an easy thing to make an old refrain ring anew–to take a well-worn and understood phrase, loaded with specific histories, tied up with particular traditions, and to add to it, straining to make a connection to new and more diverse discourses. That is precisely the task that Barry Maxwell and Raymond Craib, the editors of No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries, undertake when they assert that the imperialist core-periphery divide that continues to haunt much anarchist theory and study must be deconstructed and deposed as firmly as anarchists have rejected gods and masters. Arranged around five thematic sections, and spanning from traditional archival histories of labour and anti-statist movements, through literary “interventions” into the connections between capitalism, genocide, and some particularly scary stories about vampires, to surrealist grappling with Nietzsche’s “mercenary” words, this is a wild, fun, and varied collection. How much it contributes to a breaking down of core-periphery tensions and inequalities is debatable, but it is certain to show new perspectives on anarchism to even the most radical reader.

The five thematic sections of the book divide up the chapters into different clusters based on interesting and important–if occasionally vague–criteria. Titled, respectively, “Learning From Indigenous Experience: Anarchism and Indigeneity”, “A Thousand Links: Transnational Lines in an Anarchist Age”, “The Horizon at the Centre: No Peripheries”, “The Black Mirror: Anarchism, Surrealism, and the Situationists” and “Black, Red, and Grey: Anarchism, Communism, and Political Theory”, these sections have in common only their commitment to conjoin anarchist discourses with those potentially parallel or intersecting strands of libertarian thought beyond the recognized anarchist milieu. Many of the chapters are standard scholarly essays, including some very rich archival explorations related to labour movements or thinkers and leaders important to particular causes, but not all. First, the book is shot through with illustrations and photos, some related directly to chapters in the book and others to larger discursive frameworks. Further, two “interventions” push the collection beyond the expected: the first, a reflection on May Day by historian Peter Linebaugh that winds through terrifying tales of vampires, through critiques of austerity and the ties between capital and colonization, to argue for a need to slay the “monsters” of the global economic crisis (p.80-113); the second, a photo essay by Egypt-based artist Bahia Shehab of her sustained activist campaign that involved spray-painting an evolving series of protest slogans and symbols such as “No to military rule” and “No to stealing the revolution” in a public space in Cairo (p.233-241).

In addition to these methodological departures, the sheer diversity of topics and research makes this collection a veritable carnival of interesting and surprising ideas, though like any carnival some of the prizes are easier to win than others: in some of the dense archival histories and the highly-conceptual engagements with surrealism or political theory, the level of detail and specific knowledge required to see exactly what the chapter is trying to do can be daunting to those (like myself) who do not regularly work in those registers.

Across the five thematic sections, there are several apparent cross-cutting subject matters. First, there are those historical works that seek to excavate or expand our understanding of the way that anarchism has been particularised in specific place-based struggles or cultural-national-ethnic contexts. The majority of these studies are rooted broadly in Latin America, which is unsurprising given the strong history of Leftist organising throughout that region. There is: an investigation into the importance of the mestizo identity of “libertarian ideologue” Luis Cusicanqui in Boliva (p.12-21); an examination of the relationship between Indigenous and socialist thought in the practices of the Zapatistas (p.22-43); a critical refutation of the myth of the “itinerant, stateless radical” exemplified through In some editions of the book (including mine), the pictures associated with the “Spraying No” intervention are misplaced, appearing in the middle of the previous chapter.


the persecution of Spanish-born Chilean organiser Casimiro Barrios Fernandez (p.158-179); an unearthing of the vibrant and powerful anarchist-syndicalist alliances among marine and river-front workers in Brazil during the early 20th century (p.180-214); an exploration of urban-rural solidarity behind anarchist movements at the same time in Peru (p.215-232); and a complex mapping of the “articulation” of anarchist praxis in Mexican political discourses (p.336-348). That accounts for nearly half of the 14 “academic essay” chapters in the book, establishing that, for lived examples of anarchist practices, scholars should not only look to the common examples of the Spanish Revolution and the Paris Commune, but at the century and a half of Leftist struggle throughout Latin America. These chapters, while not methodologically homogeneous, often rely on reading against the archival grain and paying close attention to the lives and words of activists and organisers to show how theories that are articulated in simple terms in the abstract can become both more powerful and also far more complex upon application.

Another cluster of works pursues an interrogation of anarchism itself, in an attempt to figure out how it can be used to find “meaning” across seemingly disparate struggles in the
global present. Many of these chapters are more theoretical or conceptual in nature, while still speaking to the quotidian, material realities of people and communities in struggle against the
state and capital. These include: an intense and necessarily partial recounting of the interactions between the IWW-inspired Chicago Surrealist group and French surrealists spanning about four decades (p.244-262); a re-reading of Bakunin through the works of
surrealist poet Will Alexander in the hope of receiving “signals from places of life that we can hardly imagine” (p.282); a challenging meeting-of-the-minds between one-time situationist Raoul Vaneigem and anarchist bugbear (or bad boy?) Friedrich Nietzsche (p.283-313); and Silvia Federici’s closing chapter that meditates on the importance of seeing global anarchism as both always already present and also dynamically shifting, as anarchism, Marxism, and feminism are articulated in increasingly complex relational formations (p.349-357). Perhaps also in this section we could place Adrienne Hurley’s chapter, which draws out transnational links between student-driven protests in Quebec, Canada, and Japan, through the lens of educational institutions as part of new regimes of securitisation and the policing of dissent (p.116-130). While not as specifically probing of “anarchism” as the other chapters discussed here, Hurley’s chapter is a challenge to many anarchists who fall into one of two broad camps–those who have been radicalised through student politics and exposure to radical scholarship who often overlook their own role in reproducing social hierarchies, and those grassroots activists who dismiss universities as inherently oppressive and in so doing may miss the vibrancy and potential of university-incubated student and youth activism.

The remaining chapters, while not unified by approach or content, mark some of the most intriguing contributions of the volume, thinking through anarchism not as a primary current or referent, but as something that can be appended to or provide fresh critical perspectives on existing struggles. As Craib makes clear in the Foreword to the book, these chapters are not “looking for anarchism” in existing struggles–a worthwhile pursuit, and a vibrant one within geography thanks to the popularity of works like Weapons of the Weak by James Scott (1985), and recent provocations by Simon Springer and colleagues (2012) in this journal and elsewhere, but also a pursuit that reveals only a limited part of the wider spectrum of libertarian and autonomous action. So it is that the 2004 insurrection in Kabylia, Algeria, is examined not to find anarchist tendencies within it, but rather to reveal horizontalist practices, successes, and failures that many anarchists will not be aware of, and will undoubtedly find useful in their organising and critique (p.131-155). Likewise, two concepts–“revolution”, a term close to many anarchist hearts, and “enlightenment”, a term usually rejected as associated with liberalism–are brought into conversation through the framework of the Arab Spring (p.316-335). Rather than recuperating an anarchistic version of liberal enlightenment, this chapter demonstrates how the dialectics of “revolution”–the interplay between social and scientific paradigm shifts–require us to think through liberal and totalitarian interpretations of “enlightenment thinking” which inform the imaginations even of people seeking radical breaks with (some) social and political traditions. Finally, in what is for me the stand-out chapter of the book, Maia Ramnath deftly weaves together anarchist and anticapitalist theory, with social and cultural histories of India and Brahmanism, frameworks of indigeneity and belonging, and a strong dose of critical analyses of race and colonialism, into an open-ended discussion of these intersecting, conflicting, complicating trajectories (p.44-79). This chapter, more than any other in the volume, challenges the “stale formalism” of many anarchist inquiries, raising questions of how religion, culture, caste, race, indigeneity, and capitalist development all complicate and shift the frame of liberatory and autonomous thought. After underlining nearly every sentence in the chapter, I am convinced–not of any particular argument, as the chapter makes few set claims, but of the need for the conversation to progress.

The book overall is not without flaws. While the Foreword and framing of the first thematic section make clear that addressing the existence, persistence, and revolutionary aspirations of Indigenous peoples in the Americas is both a priority for this book and should be for anarchism more generally, there seems to be an obvious gap or hole in the text around this issue. While the first thematic section opens with a quote from Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, whose 2005 book Wasasé sought to begin sketching a political philosophy of “anarchoindigenism”, and the acknowledgements note that Yellowknives Dene political theorist Glen Coulthard–whose 2014 book brings Marx and Fanon into sustained dialogue–participated in the original conference, the absence of articles or interventions from them or their contemporaries is noted. The tradition of “indigenous resurgence” that they, along with Audra Simpson (Mohawk), Leanne Simpson (Anishinaabe), and similar scholars, are articulating is to me one of the most important developments for anarchist thought generally.

In a different vein, while the volume is explicitly set as an exploration of the messy, mutable entanglements between anarchism and other forms of thought and modes of social mobilisation, it does occasionally stray towards the “looking for anarchism” tendency that the editors obviously hope to avoid. Especially in some of the detailed histories, and perhaps out
of necessity given that these often excavate little-understood moments of resistance and rebellion, anarchism and anarchists seem constantly thrust to centre stage. This is not always
a failing: for example, in Geoffroy de Laforcade’s engagement with anarchist and syndicalist organising among marine workers in Brazil, the sustained focus on anarchism allows for a clarification of the dynamic relationship between anarchism and other forces at work in the Brazilian labour movement, both those hostile to and supportive of labour autonomy. de Laforcade’s chapter brilliantly shows how many anarchist victories came through cooperation
with trade unions of various kinds and relied on tactics that many “purist” anarchists might reject out of hand (voting, negotiating with government officials, and so on). Perhaps, though,
what this demonstrates is that there still is a need to “look for” anarchism in diverse social movements, but that–as de Laforcade demonstrates–this should be because partnerships with other social movements often hold the key to making anarchist ambitions into realistic activist goals.

In sum, this is book that anyone interested in radical politics should read. Not all of the contributions will inspire the same levels of excitement–or outrage–but they are likely to provoke some manner of response. And that, I think, is the point of an edited volume such as this one: by adding the demand to reject peripheries along with gods and masters, Craib, Maxwell, and their contributors are saying that even the radical vision of the world presented
by “classical” anarchism may still need further radicalisation. The book does not collapse the core-periphery dialectic any more than it eliminates divine beings with the force of its logic–
but it does demand that we consider looking for the locus of radical struggles in new and very different places, and in fact, almost everywhere.


References
Alfred T (2005) Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press

Coulthard G (2014) Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Scott J C (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press

Springer S, Ince A, Pickerill J, Brown G and Barker A J (2012) Reanimating anarchist geographies: A new burst of colour.

Antipode 44(5):1591-1604

Buy the book | Buy the e-Book | Check out Raymond Craib and Barry Maxwell Editor's Pages

One Chord Wonders in Scanner Zine

Scanner Zine
January 31st, 2016

Over the years there have been a number of tomes that have attempted to analyze, quantify, understand, justify, decry and simply observe the phenomena that was Punk Rock. Recent years have seen these books branch out into Hardcore and other sub-genres, but still the resounding bulk are those about the UK 1977 explosion (and implosion come to that!). So, does the world really need another succession of prose that over-analyze something that was as organic, uncontrived (in the most part), vitriolic and physical as Punk Rock - something which was born of its time - as a reaction against the depression and mediocrity of late 70s England?

In this case, the answer is a resounding YES! Y’see Scannerites, this book is a reprint of what was the first of its kind. Originally printed in 1985, this has been out of print for many years and represents the very first in-depth critique of the thing we call... The Punk Rock.

Taking up six chapters, Laing analyses Punk from its Formation and continues through Naming, Listening, Looking, Framing and the Aftermath before a Conclusion rounds the main book out. He uses what are considered to be the first of the UK Punk albums as templates (‘The Clash’, ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’, ‘Damned Damned Damned’, ‘Rattus Norvegicus IV’ and ‘Pure Mania’) along with a smattering of the early UK Punk singles and places them against what was happening in the charts of the era. All aspects of Punk are analysed in those chapters, from the bands that acted as precursors, through to the names of bands and individuals, the acts of Pogoing and gobbing, fashion, politics and lyrical origins, mainstream music press and fanzines, major labels and the advent of independents and the removal of the breakdown between band and audience. There is also a look at what was coming in the wake of ‘77 Punk with mentions of CRASS, PUBLIC IMAGE LTD, EXPLOITED, SOUTHERN DEATH CULT and AU PAIRS. It’s a well researched narrative and, while definitely written from a deeply analytical perspective, it rarely becomes ponderous, pretentious or overtly highbrow.

The books is filled out with a Foreword by TV SMITH, an Introduction from the original book and an updated Preface for this print. There is also a reprint of the original picture section and a bounty of Appendixes including a 1976-1980 Chronology, select discographies and a look at the 1976 charts and chart positions of the original brace of Punk releases.

It’s interesting to juxtapose this, the first of its kind, with the plethora of similar books that have been printed since. I’ve read a few lately that come on like some fucking University exercise written by ‘graduates’ who wanna get a high grade but retain a ‘cutting edge’ for a job - no doubt as some overly-educated, under-experienced music ‘journalist’. One Chord Wonders, and Laing’s narrative has no suggestion of that. This reads as a genuine study of what Punk was in the late 70s and born from a desire to discover what created the monster and not shy away from the monster’s failings and hypocrisies.

Let’s face it, 1976 was 40 years ago; a lot has changed. A lot has become eulogized, aggrandized, bastardized and mythologized. Given this was written in the early 1980s, it should be viewed as a first-hand account of one of the most inspiring times in UK culture and, if not a defining text on 70s Punk, then certainly one of the most unbiased and articulate of its kind.

Buy book now | Buy e-Book now | Back to Dave Laing's Author Page

Kairos

In ancient Greek philosophy, kairos signifies the right time or the “moment of transition.” We believe that we live in such a transitional period. The most important task of social science in time of transformation is to transform itself into a force of liberation.

Kairos, an editorial imprint of the Anthropology and Social Change department housed in the California Institute of Integral Studies, publishes groundbreaking works in critical social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, geography, theory of education, political ecology, political theory, and history.

Series editor: Andrej Grubačić

1. Practical Utopia: Strategies for a Desirable Society by Michael Albert
2. In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism: The San Francisco Lectures by John Holloway
3. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism edited by Jason W. Moore
4. Birth Work as Care Work: Stories from Activist Birth Communities by Alana Apfel
5. We Are the Crisis of Capital: A John Holloway Reader by John Holloway

 

An Interview with Mark Van Steenwyk

NetGalley

Where did you get the idea for A Wolf at the Gate?

I’ve loved the legend of Saint Francis and the wolf for years. It is one of the stories about peacemaking I’ve told my son. Unfortunately, Jonas prefers violent stories. I wrote A Wolf at the Gate for him. I wanted to tell the most exciting story I could, but one that still subverted the old myth of redemptive violence.

Previously, you’ve written or contributed to works of non-fiction–particularly in areas of spirituality and radical politics. How did you decide to write a story for children?

We live in a dark world. Our nation has been at war for most of my life. Increasingly, folks are protesting economic injustice, environmental injustice, racial injustice…but we don’t seem much closer to justice.

Adults are often set in their ways, but children often have an imagination for a new world. In a way, I don’t see this book as very much of a departure from my earlier books. The big difference is my audience. I’m starting to write for children because I believe that our hopes for justice rest with them.

Have you been inspired by any authors in particular?

I’ve been reading Lloyd Alexander’s stuff my whole life. I love the Prydain Chronicles. He has a way of playing with folklore that keeps it timeless but fresh. I’m also a huge fan of Neil Gaiman and have been influenced by his willingness to let his children’s stories linger in darkness. And I’m indebted to Ursula Le Guin. She’s one of the greatest writers of the past 100 years. Her storytelling and prose are amazing, but the thing that sets her apart is her ability to explore social constructs in her work without being preachy.

Why is the wolf red?

There are a couple reasons for that. Firstly, it is a bit of a visual pun. The book presents what could be interpreted as a leftist economic vision. So, she is a red wolf both literally and figuratively. Secondly, the color red captures the violence of her character. But I also think it just works better aesthetically. It is a children’s book, after all. We don’t need to be bound by convention…and something about a bright red wolf captivates my imagination.

Do you have another project in the works? If so, what is it?

In terms of children’s literature, I’ve been working on a five-part epic about a post-apocalyptic squirrel that I’m calling the Hackberry Saga. It actually takes place within the same world as A Wolf at the Gate, but thousands of years in the future. The main character, Hackberry, lives in a world where certain animals have risen and human beings are almost entirely lost to legend.

Buy A Wolf at the Gate | Buy the e-Book of A Wolf at the Gate | Back to Mark Van Steenwyk's Author Page

Gypsy reviewed in Locus Magazine

by Paul Di Filippo
Locus


To examine the forty-year-long bibliography of Carter Scholz at ISFDB is to dream of alternate timelines. First, a continuum where, perhaps, circumstances—interior and exterior to the author—allowed Scholz to produce a far greater amount of fiction than the modestly substantial amount on display. But also we can imagine a timeline where this exact same CV in all its glory has drawn the notice of myriad critics and fans, and thus elevated Scholz to the stratosphere of literary acclaim due to his grace, sophistication, and unflinchingly bravura storytelling.

But, alas, our genre is full of unsung geniuses—at least, unsung in the mainstream world. R. A. Lafferty, David Bunch, Avram Davidson, Carol Emshwiller, where are your laurels? If Scholz is keeping company with these illustrious peers and forebears, he is already in as magnificent a legion as any writer could want.

Scholz’s new book—a short novel, two stories, an essay, and an interview—appears from PM Press, a publisher with a progressive slant who has been dipping a toe into science fiction under the auspices of curator Terry Bisson. They’ve published Le Guin, John Shirley, Eleanor Arnason, Rudy Rucker, Karen Joy Fowler, and the VanderMeers, among others, so Scholz shares eminent stablemates.

Gypsy is the tale of a meticulously rendered but kludgy slower-than-light starship fleeing a systems-crashing totalitarian Earth. As that synopsis might foreshadow, the tale is not a barrel of laughs. To cut to the chase, the starship mission fails. Or does it? Scholz gives us a devastating tale where an admirable, almost superhuman heroism does not result in a clear-cut victory—or any conventional victory at all—but rather in a spiritual or symbolical triumph amidst ashes, rendered all the more laudable by a kind of defiant, Battle of Thermopylae stubbornness and clarity of purpose.

We start out with a devastating portrait of our planet, ecological and cultural, circa the 2040s. All the harshest physical and sociopolitical trends we can see in 2015 have been accelerated and pushed to the max. Even the invention of clean practical fusion power has been subverted and denied. The Earth and human civilization seems to be circling the drain. “Its failures, its cruelties, its grandeurs, its aspirations—all extirpated to the root, in a fury of self-loathing  that fed on what it destroyed.”

Now, you can argue whether this is a likely future or not. But you cannot argue with the forcefulness and almost cyberpunkian ingenuity with which Scholz builds this future. In minute detail, he illustrates all our “poison poetry of ruin and catastrophe and longing.” Fittingly for a writer who came of age in the 1970s, he harks back to the great quartet of doomsday novels by John Brunner. But he layers on four additional decades of bad news and disappointments.

Having established this background, he foregrounds scientist Roger Fry and his sixteen compatriots. These are the core plotters who want to build, with stolen materials, and to launch, all in secret, the starship Gypsy to Alpha Centauri. (Shades of another Seventies icon, Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire.) Our point of view lies mainly onboard the failing ship as a succession of “stewards” are awakened from cold sleep during crisis points in the ship’s 80-year-plus journey. These travelers are particularized with an incredible depth of character seldom found in most science fiction. And despite plot-addicted naysayers among fandom, such deep persona-building is hardly wasted effort, as each starfarer’s nature determines how they handle each crisis. And we get similar treatment of Fry, who we learn early on has been captured by the authorities and left behind when Gypsy takes off.

Ultimately, in an unforeseen ending, the efforts of the Gypsy and crew are proven to amount to that of a beacon guttering into extinction while having done its job of both lighting the ship of Earth to safe harbor and also thumbing its nose at the dominant paradigm of greed and indifference and materialistic anhedonia that has wrought so much ill over the past several centuries. A “tiny splinter of human will forge through vast, uncaring space.”

Obviously, this book stands in dialogue with such recent novels as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora and Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, and with Barry Malzberg’s classic Galaxies. But much starker and existential even than those, it is primarily an anti-space-opera, if you will, a charnel-ground meditation on what lies at the end of all efforts.

Following this knockout story, the shorter works agreeably extend our feel for Scholz’s talents without necessarily magnifying his scope.

“The Nine Billion Names of God” is an epistolary metatextual tale about an SF writer with a manic idea. It references Borges explicitly, and lives up to that high standard. “Bad Pennies” is told adroitly in the form a Congressional interrogation, and reads like the economic SF of Mack Reynolds as filtered through the modernist sensibilities of William Gaddis. This is a Good Thing.

The essay on “The United States of Impunity” offers a by-now-all-too-familiar chronicle of the major missteps taken by our government and corporate citizens since 9/11. Impassioned yet somewhat predictable at this late date, it would benefit from an extension that looked at matters, for good or ill, after 2008.

Finally, the happy, playful dialogue between Bisson and Scholz reveals a writer at ease with himself and the world, still casting about for new themes and topics and techniques after his masterly achievements.

This world of ours might not be the one where Scholz had his ideal career. But it is the one world we can be certain is lucky enough to have him around.

Paul Di Filippo has been writing professionally for over thirty years, and has published almost that number of books. He lives in Providence, RI, with his mate of an even greater number of years, Deborah Newton.

Buy Gypsy | Buy the e-Book of Gypsy | Back to Carter Scholtz's Author Page

Jewish Noir Reviewed in The Big Click

by RRS
The Big Click
January 2016

There’s been a glut of Jewish-themed books lately, especially in YA, ones that seem to wear Jewish-ness as a trapping, as much an accessory as the novel having the love interest be a vampire, neither conscious of nor caring for the very real and living culture and traditions. So when I saw Jewish Noir,my first thought was all right, what the hell have I got to complain about now?

As it turns out, nothing. It’s a solid collection from a wide range of writers, most more-or-less writing from a uniquely Jewish perspective. Crime? Yeah, there’s a lot of crime, a lot of hard time and short luck all thematically enmeshed into Jewish roots. The particular focus of the collection, which despite my initial skepticism, I enjoyed, never felt unnecessary, but provided a commonality between the wildly different voices that flowed well throughout. Like most anthologies, a couple of the stories towards the middle felt like filler, but several — perhaps most notably in the first story in the collection, R.S. Brenner’s “Devil for a Witch”— ended on neatly executed little screwturn gut-punches, which is the kind of feeling I look for in a noir.

Like the editor says, if you’re looking for the hardboiled, the rootless, the persecuted and the cornered, you don’t have to look much further than the Jews, so what better thematic match could there be?

Buy Jewish Noir | Buy the e-Book of Jewish Noir | Back to Ken Wishnia's Author Page

Jewish Noir Reviewed on New York Journal of Books

by Michelle Martinez
New York Journal of Books
January 19th, 2016

Jewish Noir isn’t for the faint-hearted nor is it for the typical noir fan, and not due to the Judaic symbolism, mythology, or history, but rather because Jewish noir, as it is defined by editor Kenneth Wishnia through the short stories he collects in this anthology, is not the typical detective and damsel-in-distress trope readers may expect.

Wishnia has gathered diverse writers to create a dark and bitter selection of short stories featuring Jewish tropes, themes, and characters. Not all the stories deal with the Holocaust, like “Feeding the Crocodile” by Moe Prager, and those that can do so in surprising ways, such as “Blood Diamonds” by Melissa Yi.  Most of the short stories in this collection are appearing for the first time. There is a wide variety to the stories from that of the misunderstood professor who holds out for his integrity but snaps, to the magical realist “The Golem of Jericho” in which a golem may or may not have been behind some murders.

Truly, the majority of these stories are dark and disturbing on a psychological level. Fans of horror may enjoy this new genre, and a reader doesn’t need to be Jewish to enjoy the tales within, though some understanding of Judaism and its mythology may help make the stories resonate more with their symbolism and references.

- See more at: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/jewish-noir#sthash.mMYTGjLP.dpuf

Buy Jewish Noir | Buy the e-Book of Jewish Noir | Back to Ken Wishnia's Author Page