Celebrate the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara with 30% off all of his books!

ERNESTO GUEVARA DE LA SERNA was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. While studying for a medical degree in Buenos Aires, he took a trip with his friend Alberto Granado on an old Norton motorcycle through all of Latin America, the basis for The Motorcycle Diaries. During his travels he witnessed the Bolivian revolution in 1953; and, in Guatemala in 1954, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz by US-backed forces. Forced to leave Guatemala, he went to Mexico City, where he linked up with exiled Cuban revolutionaries and met Fidel Castro in 1955. Che joined their expedition to Cuba, where the revolutionary war began in the Sierra Maestra mountains. At first Che was the troop doctor, and later became Rebel Army commander in July 1957.  Following the rebels’ victory on January 1, 1959, he was a key leader of the new revolutionary government and also of the political organization that in 1965 became the Communist Party of Cuba. He was killed in Bolivia on October 9, 1967.

June marks Stonewall Rememberance Month, aka Pride Month, a celebration of LGBTQIA+ liberation and all that has been won and all that is still left to fight for. While we're delighted to celebrate throughout June, we want to encourage everyone to read, and champion, literature by queer writers throughout the year — not just during Pride Month. That said, now's a great time to stock up.

Celebrate queer, trans, and otherwise LGBTQIA+ writers all year long with some of our favorite works of radical queer literature. Pick up a new book for yourself, or for someone else, and don't forget to tell your friends how much you love them.

 

Available to download for free, Full Spectrum Resistance the radical’s guide to activist work—the manual we need at this crucial moment to organize against the fascist creep and fight against the increasingly militarized industry of repression. 

A guide to direct action for those disillusioned with the posturing of liberal “activism.”

Thoroughly exploring the achievements and failures of radical movements throughout history—from 19th-century anti-colonial rebellions in China and the environmental actions of First Nations and Native American tribes throughout the 20th century, to Black Lives Matter and the fight for Gay Liberation—the two volumes of Full Spectrum Resistance candidly advocate for direct action, not just risk-averse models of protest marches and call-ins. With in-depth histories and case studies of social justice and environmental movements, noted writer, activist, and farmer Aric McBay explains why passive resistance alone cannot work, and how we must be prepared to do whatever it takes to create substantial social change.

In Volume 1: Building Movements and Fighting to Win, McBay describes the need for resistance movements, and paints a portrait of what a thriving resistance movement might look like today. Citing successful movements such as the Deacons of Defense of the American Civil Rights Movement, the anti-colonial revolutions in Guinea and Cape Verde, and activist groups like Act-UP, McBay deftly illustrates how to organize activist groups and encourage enlistment, while also noting the necessary precautions one must take to secure these radical circles from infiltration and collapse.

In Volume 2: Actions and Strategies for Change, McBay uses the successful strategies of various actions, such as the Greek Resisters of the 2008 Greek Television Takeover, to articulate the best practices for inter-activist coordination and communication with mass media to effectively spread message. Covering reconnaissance methods and other forms of intelligence-gathering, Volume 2 guides the reader in smart decision-making and damage control, such as how to recover from both covert and overt adversarial attacks, such as COINTELPRO (1971). Moreover, this manual clearly articulates the best strategies and practices for the financial, logistical, and tactical organization necessary to all successful radical movements in the long term. 

Further Reading About Protest and Direct Action, Now 30% Off

This classic manual on repression by revolutionary activist Victor Serge offers fascinating anecdotes about the tactics of police provocateurs and an analysis of the documents of the Tsarist secret police in the aftermath of the Russian revolution.

As we approach the 100th anniversary of Victor Serge’s (1926) classic exposé of political repression, the specter of fear as a tool of political repression is chillingly familiar to us in world increasingly threatened by totalitarianism. Serge’s exposé of the surveillance methods used by the Czarist police reads like a spy thriller. An irrepressible rebel, Serge wrote this manual for political activists, describing the structures of state repression and how to dodge them—including how to avoid being followed, what to do if arrested, and tips on securing correspondence. He also explains how such repression is ultimately ineffective.

“Repression can really only live off fear. But is fear enough to remove need, thirst for justice, intelligence, reason, idealism…? Relying on intimidation, the reactionaries forget that they will cause more indignation, more hatred, more thirst for martyrdom, than real fear. They only intimidate the weak; they exasperate the best forces and temper the resolution of the strongest.” —Victor Serge

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THE PROBLEM OF ILLEGALITY
An Excerpt from What Every Radical Should Know about State Repression: A Guide for Activists by Victor Serge

DON'T BE FOOLED

Without a clear perspective on this problem, knowledge of police methods and procedures would be of no practical utility.

Fetishism of legality was and still is one of the characteristic features of the class collaboration tendency of socialism. It involves a belief in the possibility of transforming the capitalist order without entering into conflict with its privileged elements. But rather than indicating a naiveté quite incompatible with the mentality of politicians, it is a sign of the corruption of the leaders. Entrenched in a society they pretend to be fighting, they recommend respecting the rules of the game. The working class can only respect bourgeois legality if it ignores the real role of the state and the deceptive nature of democracy; in short, the first principles of the class struggle.

If the worker knows that the state is a mesh of institutions designed to defend the interests of the property owners against the non-owners, that is, to maintain the exploitation of labor; that the law, always decreed by the rich against the poor, is enforced by magistrates invariably belonging to the ruling class; that the law is invariably enforced along rigorous class lines; that coercion, which begins with a quiet order from a policeman, passes via the lockup and the penitentiary, and ends with the fall of the guillotine—is the systematic exercise of legalized violence against the exploited, then the only way the worker can view legality is as a fact, whose different facets he should know about, with its different applications, traps and pitfalls (and also advantages, which should be made use of at certain points) but which should be nothing but a purely material obstacle to his class.

Is it necessary to demonstrate the anti-proletarian nature of all bourgeois legality? Perhaps. In our unequal struggle against the old world, the simplest things must be explained again and again each day. We need only mention a number of fairly well-known facts.

In every country, the workers’ movement has had to win, in over half a century of struggle, the right to associate and the right to strike. Even in France this right is still not conceded to state employed workers nor those in industries considered to be of public utility (as if all industries aren’t), such as the railways.

In the conflicts between capital and labor, the army has often intervened against labor—never against capital.

In court the defense of the poor is nothing short of impossible, because of the cost of any judicial action; in effect, a worker can neither bring a case nor defend one.

The overwhelming majority of crimes are directly caused by poverty and come into the category of attacks on property. The overwhelming majority of prison inmates are from the poor.

Up until the war, there was discriminatory suffrage in Belgium; a capitalist, a curate, an officer or a lawyer each had as many votes as two, or three workers. At the time of writing an attempt is being made to reestablish discriminatory suffrage in Italy.

To respect legality such as this is to be fooled by it. Nonetheless, it would be equally disastrous to ignore it. The advantages for the workers’ movement are the greater the less one is fooled. The right to exist and to act legally is, for the organizations of the proletariat, something which must constantly be re-won and extended. We stress this because sometimes among good revolutionaries there emerges the diametrical opposite of fetishizing legality—due to a kind of tendency to make the least political effort (it is easier to conspire than to lead mass action) they have a certain disdain for legal action.

We believe that in countries where the reaction has not yet triumphed, destroying the previous democratic constitution, the workers will have to fight to defend every inch of their legal position, and in other countries fight to regain it. In France itself, the legal status the workers’ movement enjoys must be extended, and this can only be done through struggle. The right of association and the right to strike are still denied to state employees and certain other categories of workers; the right to demonstrate is much more restricted than in the Anglo-Saxon countries; the advanced guard of workers’ defense have still not conquered the streets and gained legality as in Germany and Austria.

THE POSTWAR EXPERIENCE

During the war the governments of all the belligerent countries replaced democratic institutions by military dictatorship (martial law, the virtual suppression of the right to strike, prorogation or recess of parliaments, handing over all power to the generals and the court-martial regimes). The exceptional requirements of national defense gave them a plausible justification. Since the end of the war, when the Red tide surging out from Russia flowed out over the whole of Europe, almost all the capitalist states—this time fighting the class war, and under threat from the workers’ movement— treated their previously sacred legislation as worth less than the paper it was written on.

The Baltic states (Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) and Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia brought out against the working class brutal laws untainted with democratic hypocrisy. Bulgaria refined the effects of its brutal legislation with extra-legal violence. Hungary, Italy and Spain were content with abolishing, so far as the workers and peasants were concerned, any legality whatsoever. More cultivated, and better organized, Germany, without resorting to special powers, established what can be called a regime of legal police terror.1 The United States brutally applies its laws on “criminal unionism,” sabotage and . . . espionage! Thousands of workers were arrested under an Espionage Act passed during the war against German subjects living in the United States.

The only countries left in Europe where the labor movement still enjoys the benefits of democratic legality are Scandinavia, England, France and a few small countries. It can be said without fear of being disproved by events that with the first really dangerous social crisis this advantage will be promptly and abruptly withdrawn. Very definite signs have appeared which demand our attention. In November 1924, the British elections took place on the basis of an anticommunist campaign, the basic evidence for which was a forged letter from Zinoviev, supposedly addressed to the British Labour Party and intercepted by the state. In France there have on several occasions been attempts to dissolve the CGT. If I am not mistaken, this dissolution even received formal approval. Briand in his time even—illegally—went so far as to militarize railway workers, in order to break their strike. Clemenceau’s tactics are not something belonging to the distant past—and Poincaré has shown, since the occupation of the Ruhr, an evident desire to imitate him.

Now, for a revolutionary party, being taken unawares by being outlawed means that you disappear. On the other hand, being prepared for illegality makes you certain of surviving any measures of repression. Three striking examples from recent history illustrate the truth of this.

1. A great communist party which allowed itself to be taken unawares when made illegal:

The Yugoslav Communist Party, a mass party, which in 1920 had more than 120,000 members and sixty deputies in the Skupchina, was dissolved in 1921, in compliance with the State Defense Law. Its defeat was instant and total. It disappeared from the political scene.[2]

2. A communist party which was taken only half unawares:

The Italian Communist Party [PCI] was obliged, even before Mussolini’s rise to power, to pursue what was at best a semi-legal existence, because of fascist persecution. The furious repression—with 4,000 workers arrested in the first week of 1923— was at no point able to smash the PCI, which on the contrary was strengthened and fortified, its membership rising from 10,000 in 1923 to almost 30,000 at the beginning of 1925.

3. A great communist party which was not in the least taken unawares:

At the end of 1923, after the revolutionary events of October and the Hamburg insurrection, the German Communist Party was dissolved by General von Seeckt. Prepared over a long period, and with flexible, illegal organizations, it was none-theless able to continue its normal existence. The government soon had to reconsider a measure of such evident inanity. The German Communist Party came out of illegality with its forces hardly impaired, to get over three and a half million votes in the 1924 elections.

THE LIMITS OF LEGAL REVOLUTIONARY ACTION

What is more, legality, in the most “advanced” capitalist democracies, has limits which the proletariat cannot respect without condemning itself to defeat. Propaganda in the army, a vital necessity, is not legally tolerated. Without the defection of at least a part of the army, there is no victorious revolution. This is a law of history. In every bourgeois army, the party of the proletariat must arouse and cultivate revolutionary traditions, possess extensive organizations, tenacious in their work, and more vigilant than the enemy. The most democratic of legal systems would not in the least tolerate action committees at the very points where they are most necessary: in the great railway junctions, the docks, the arsenals and the airports. The most democratic of legal systems does not tolerate communist propaganda in the colonies: as proof, take the persecution of the Egyptian and Indian revolutionaries by the British authorities; and also the regime of police provocation established by the French authorities in Tunisia. Finally, it need scarcely be said that international communications services must at all times be subject to investigation by the political police.

Nobody maintained the need for illegal revolutionary organization more firmly than Lenin—in the period of the founding of the Russian Bolshevik Party and later, during the founding of the European communist parties. Nobody fought harder against the fetishism of legality. At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democracy (in Brussels and London, 1903), the division between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks took shape precisely over the question of illegal organization. The motive was the discussion of the first paragraph of the statutes. L. Martov, who for 20 years was to be the leader of Menshevism, wanted to concede membership of the party to anyone which lent it his services (under the control of the party)—that is, in reality, to the many sympathizers, especially in intellectual circles, who would try not to compromise themselves to the point of collaborating in illegal actions. Intractably, Lenin maintained that to belong to the party it was necessary “to participate in the work of one of its (illegal) organizations.” The discussion appeared to be splitting hairs. But Lenin was a thousand times right. You cannot be half, or a third a revolutionary. The party of the revolution must, of course, make use of every contribution; but it cannot be content with receiving just vague, discreet, verbal, inactive sympathy from its members. Those who do not agree to risk a privileged material situation for the sake of the working class, should not be in a position to exercise real influence within it. The attitude towards illegality was for Lenin the touchstone for differentiating between real revolutionaries and others.[3]

PRIVATE POLICE FORCES

Another factor must be taken into account: the existence of private police forces outside the law that provide the bourgeoisie with excellent hired guns.

During the world war, the information service of Action Française was notably successful in supplying Clemenceau’s courts-martial. It is well known that Marius Plateau was at the head of AF’s private police. Meanwhile, a certain Jean Maxe,[4] the zealous compiler and distributor of the Cahiers de l’antifrance, devoted himself to spying on the vanguard movements. It is very likely that all the reactionary formations inspired by the example of the Italian fascists have espionage and police services.

In Germany, since the official disarming of the country, the essential forces of reaction have been concentrated in extremely secretive organizations. The reaction has understood that, even in parties supported by the state, clandestinity is a precious asset. Naturally all these organizations take on the functions of virtual undercover police forces against the proletariat.

In Italy, the fascist party is not content with having the official police at its disposal. It has its own espionage and counterespionage services. Everywhere it spreads informers, secret agents, provocateurs and police spies. And it is this mafia, police and terrorists all in one, which “suppressed” Matteotti—as it had many others.

In the United States, the participation of the private police in the conflicts between labor and capital has grown fearfully. The offices of famous private detectives provide the capitalists with discreet informers, expert provocateurs, riflemen, guards, foremen and also totally corrupt “trade union militants.” The Pinkertons, Burns and Thiels detective agencies have 100 head offices and about 10,000 branches: they supposedly employ 135,000 people. Their annual budget comes to $65 million. They have set up industrial espionage, factory-floor espionage, espionage in the workshop, the shipyards, offices, and wherever there are workers employed. They have created the prototype of the worker-informer. [5]

An analogous system, exposed by Upton Sinclair, operates in the universities and schools of the great democracy whose praises are sung by Walt Whitman.

CONCLUSIONS

To sum up: the study of the workings of the Okhrana shows us that the immediate aim of the police is more to know than to repress. To know in order to repress at the appointed hour, to the extent desired—if not altogether. Faced by this wily adversary, powerful and cunning, a workers’ party lacking clandestine organization, a party which keeps nothing hidden, is like an unarmed man, with no cover, in the sights of a well positioned rifleman. Revolutionary work is too serious to be kept in a glasshouse. The party of the revolution must organize so as to avoid enemy vigilance as far as possible; so as to hide its most important resources absolutely; so as not—in the countries which are still democratic—to be at the mercy of a lurch to the right by the bourgeoisie, or of a declaration of war so as to train our comrades in the behavior which is demanded by these imperatives. [6]

The sequel to The Motorcycle Diaries, this book is Ernesto Che Guevera's journal documenting the young Argentine's second trip through Latin America, revealing the emergence of a committed revolutionary.

These letters, poetry, and journalism document young Ernesto Guevara's second Latin American journey following his graduation from medical school in 1953. Together, these writings reveal how the young Argentine is transformed into a militant revolutionary.

After traveling through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Central America, Ernesto witnesses the 1954 US-inspired coup in Guatemala, which has a profound effect on his political awareness. He flees to Mexico where he encounters Fidel Castro, marking the beginning of a political partnership that profoundly changes the world and Che himself. Includes a foreword by Alberto Granado, Che's companion on his first adventures in Latin America on a vintage Norton motorcycle, and features poems written by young Ernesto inspired by his experiences along with facsimiles of pages from his diary.

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FOREWORD
ALBERTO GRANADO

It is a difficult task to write the foreword to a book whose author’s work and life made him a paradigm of a human being. One faces the temptation to transform that person into some kind of myth that is unrelated to the reality of his life. This challenge is even greater when one had the great fortune of participating in those “extravagant dream trips” into concrete reality.[1]

Those of us who enjoyed his friendship and were close enough to perceive the moral and intellectual qualities that set him above the ordinary run of humankind should, however, always remember that he was a man and only a man, not a mythical being.

Bearing this in mind, I accept the responsibility as an old friend—from as long ago as October 1942—of presenting this diary of his second Latin America journey, which with some premonition he gave the title “Otra Vez” [Once Again].

In this vivid account, the reader constantly encounters the flesh-and-blood Ernesto Guevara with all the temerity of his 25 years. Various aspects of the emerging personality are revealed, as he sets out to confront all the challenges of the journey along with his friend Carlos Ferrer (Calica)[2]: “two distinct wills extending out into the Americas, not knowing exactly what it is they seek, nor in which direction it lies.”

Nevertheless, once the decision has been made to leave the beaten track offered by Venezuela in order to discover and participate in the revolution then underway in Guatemala, the change occurring in him becomes more palpable; now a certain confidence emerges that he has found the path he had been seeking.

While his first trip through South America served to deepen his ideas about social distinctions and sharpened his consciousness of the need to struggle against them, this second journey consolidates his political understanding and fires a growing need for further study in order to grasp more clearly why and how such a struggle should be waged so that it culminates in a genuine revolution.

In my mind’s eye, I remember the good-bye from his family and friends who did not understand the reasons for his departure, yet they went through the motions appropriate to members of their class of farewelling someone leaving in search of new horizons— although in this case he was breaking all the group norms and contradicting all established schemas.

I see him dressed in Argentine army fatigues: tight pants, rough shirt and boots with the laces certainly untied, not as a sign of carelessness but in accordance with his scale of values in which external show is not the most important.

Hanging out of the second-class compartment with a broad smile, holding high his almost shaven head (always the “pelao Guevara”[3]), he departs Buenos Aires station and enters history.

From this moment, he notes down everything he considers important, the pages of his diary becoming something of a fascinating kaleidoscope of a constant symbiosis of the literary stylist and the insightful observer.

He gives a graphic description of the countryside around the Bolsa Negra mine [in Bolivia] and then comments: “But the mine’s heart was not beating. It lacked the energy of the arms of those who every day tear from the earth their load of ore, arms that on this day, August 2, the Day of the Indian and of Agrarian Reform, were in La Paz defending the revolution.”

In this passage, we can see succinctly what was already becoming axiomatic for Ernesto: the importance of the human being in all aspects of life. But at the same time, such comments reflect the great beauty of a talented writer.

Another striking aspect of this early diary is the great variety of activities Ernesto undertook on this short trip. He goes from lecturing about teacher training at the University of Buenos Aires to speaking about research with the eminent Spanish physiologist P. Suñer, a victim of persecution by the Franco regime.

He had a series of discussions (often disagreements) with prominent individuals. He drew up a critical balance sheet after each discussion that shows a remarkable insight, even half a century later.

Arriving in Costa Rica, he met several exiles, including two who would later play a significant political role as presidents of their respective countries. Certainly, his discussions with Juan Bosch from the Dominican Republic and Rómulo Betancourt of Venezuela instantly raise the question of how this unknown young man with an unassuming manner, yet incisive and critical in dialogue, could break through the circle of officials surrounding these figures.

The answer to this question is not easy; but the fact is that these discussions did take place and Ernesto’s conclusions from them could not have been more accurate.

In a few words, he describes Bosch as he was during his time in government. And he anticipates with pitiless realism how Betancourt would later conduct himself, both as president of Venezuela and leader of the Acción Democrática electoral machine, in handing over his country’s great wealth to the US transnationals.

The diary is not lacking in joy or vitality, and along with the man of ideas, we find the lively young man full of energy, sensitive to the presence of women, capable of giving the “negrita Socorro” some affection and comfort without betraying himself, while at the same time being able to judge their encounter in its true colors.

The account of his time in Mexico is extraordinarily important because of the wide range of his interests it reveals. He visits museums, admires the murals of Orozco, Rivera, Tamayo and Siqueiros, tours the fascinating Aztec pyramids, without forgetting his real objectives. Along with his fascination with Mexican culture arises his decisive and irreversible commitment, as he puts it, “to lead the life of a proletarian.”

Thus, he does not allow himself to be tempted by offers of help from Ulises Petit de Murat, Hilda [his wife], Petrone or his own aunt Beatriz, who would set him on a bourgeois path. He maintains his proletarian status with “the ordinary chain of hopes and disappointments” that characterizes the life of that class during the struggle for real power.

This new attitude to the political problems around him is clearly shown in a discussion with a group of Argentine exiles in Mexico. They want to send a message of support to the new government in Argentina that has emerged after the overthrow of Perón. In this meeting, Ernesto argues that before giving their support to the government, they should wait until it has delivered “something definite with regard to trade union democracy and the running of the economy.”

Along with this proletarian consciousness arises an ever-greater sense of human solidarity. Just as during his first trip when he shared his overcoat with a couple of workers on a freezing night on the Chilean Altiplano, now in Mexico, despite his own hardships, he seeks and obtains money (150 pesos) to help his friend “El Patojo” [“Shorty”] [4] return to Guatemala where his mother needs his financial and emotional support.

The final pages of the diary make perfectly clear the three main lines of conduct that have marked the first decades of his life: his interest and ability in science; his wanderings among curious travelers and his study of nature and civilizations in the company of friends; and his need to participate in a genuine revolution.

With regard to science, he comments on the presentation in Guanajato of his work on allergies and considers the option to do research work and human medicine. At this time, when he is writing about his future, he also refers to the idea of meeting the Granados in Caracas, and although he considers this a possibility, it is more of a passing thought than a concession to the pleas of his friends. What is especially clear to me is that his behavior and attitude is already very different from that of “Fuser” with whom he shared some unrepeatable moments in 1952. His desire for travel and research is still there, but you can sense his iron conviction not to become a semi-scientist, semi-bohemian, semi-revolutionary. Now he is ready to make a great decisive leap.

Through one of those accidents of life, it was during that difficult month of July [1955] that he first met Fidel Castro, finding in him the strength and support he needed.

And if it is said that this diary gives little space to a meeting that would be so important for the future, would I be wrong in thinking that in writing those lines, he said to himself, paraphrasing the words of “the Master” [José Martí]: “There are some things that must remain in silence.”

Alberto Granado
Havana, Cuba
August 1998

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1.  Alberto Granado was Ernesto’s traveling companion in his first trip around Latin America in 1951-52.

2. Carlos Ferrer (Calica) was a childhood friend from Alta Gracia, Córdoba.

3. Pelao: close-cropped, one of Ernesto’s nicknames.

4.  Julio Roberto Cáceres Valle.

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Born in Argentina in 1922, ALBERTO GRANADO was Che's companion on his first motorcycle adventure in Latin America, chronicled in the New York Times Bestseller The Motorcycle Diaries. A doctor and biochemist, Granado lived and worked in Venezuela for several years before moving to Cuba in 1961, where he co-founded the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Santiago. He authored the memoir Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary, and retired in 1994.

May 1st marks International Workers’ Day, a worldwide celebration of worker-power dating back to May 1, 1886, when roughly half a million workers across the United States walked off their jobs in their fight for an eight-hour workday.

To celebrate these radical roots, we're happy to share 30% off our May Day Reading List, a selection of writings we recommend from some of our favorite authors, activists, and agitators.

To celebrate the release of Rock, Paper, Grenade by Artem Chekh, translated by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum, we're proud to share an excerpt from this "tender, sharply-imagined coming-of-age novel, full of clarity and bleak humor" (Elaine Castillo). 

Rock, Paper, Grenade is a gritty and bald bildungsroman, a lilting picaresque of a life lived in the shadow of someone else’s war.

A realist depiction of Ukraine and the post Soviet world, this novel offers an affecting yet honest look into the life of someone suffering from PTSD. It is a story of growing up without much hope for a better future, and yet intense moments of connection and kindness persist. Just when things begin to seem insurmountably dark, a friendship begins, a kind word is said, or a hand reaches out and opens the curtains, letting in a little light.

When Tymofiy is five years old, his small family in Cherkasy, Ukraine grows by one. Not with the birth of a baby sister or brother, but with the appearance of Felix—mentor and tormentor, enemy and friend—Tymofiy’s grandmother’s sometime-boyfriend. “Who are you?” Felix screams in the depths of a confused and drunken rage at all who cross his path, his memories of the Soviet-Afghan war clouding his eyes and senses. “Who are you?” Tymofiy asks himself as he drifts through the streets of his hometown, searching for love and protection, for a better, happier way of life.

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A POLONAISE FOR FELIX

Lida had never been afraid of anything. Maybe because she did not watch TV or read the newspapers. Lida would listen to the radio and knit. She would sit in her small, cramped room on the bed under a monochrome tapestry (a naked woman on a riverbank), knit, and, of course, listen to the radio.

Lida swam in the Dnipro all year. Almost every day, fearless and hardened by nature, she went to the river, resolutely crossed the long sandy beach covered with islands of ice and mounds of snow, walked out on the frozen surface, looked for an ice hole left by fishermen, took off her clothes, but for a faded-pink and at one time red swimsuit, firmly rested her hands on the edges of the hole, and dove in. And all this happened year after year, until one February day she didn’t resurface from beneath the ice. For almost a minute, an unexpected force carried her away from the ice hole through the dark waters of the Dnipro, farther from the light and closer to death.

Felix rescued Lida. He often accompanied her when she was swimming. He walked into the distance, smoked, walked carefully along the icy quiet surface of the reservoir, looking toward the fairway, as if expecting desert caravans of dushman armed with Stingers to swim out of the frosty haze. But, of course, there were no caravans. And, of course, no dushman either. And when he looked back, there was no Lida. Felix rushed to the ice hole and beneath the murky ice he saw her gray flailing body. He threw off his jacket, plunged to the waist, slid his fingers along her body, looked for something to grab onto, finally grabbed her hair, pulled. Lida hit her head on the bottom of the ice, scratched her face and hands, had almost stopped breathing, and, as was made clear later, had said goodbye to life. In the murky crystal of the cold water, she managed to catch a glimpse of the light edge of the sky, remembered the summer and the sound of reeds in the backwaters between the villages of Chervona Sloboda and Lesky, the tall pines of the Sofiyivka Park, and the spring morning draft that swayed the whitewashed lace curtains hanging in the cottage’s summer kitchen. And most of all, she thought about how it was a pity that there was so little and that there could have been a little more: summer, reeds, sunshine, forest skirted with dried mushrooms, limitless lawns of heather, and silver poplars in the wind, pouring over the transparent afternoon splendor. And this was the most frightening of her fleeting thoughts.

After this, Lida didn’t swim in winter anymore.

Perhaps the river’s ice was the only thing that frightened her.

—

Felix was discharged in ’89. After he was wounded, shell-shocked, and held in captivity, the Moscow leadership started to seriously doubt his usefulness. According to the law, while waiting for retirement, he had to work somewhere, so he was taken on as a truck driver for a pasta factory. His influential friends from the Soviet party got him the job. At first, before he got used to it, Felix wandered around the factory open-mouthed. He hardly understood anything and did not trust anyone. The consequences of the shell shock did not let up for a long time. He was allowed not to work, so he wandered between the shops, sat for hours beneath the leaky shed roof, and smoked, watching the measured flow of factory life. Curiously, he repaired the fence around the flowerbed, poisoned a hornet’s nest near the public toilet, and drew a realistic penis for the funny bear on the May Day poster.

And finally, he found his way. He joined a group of veterans of the Afghan war (some criminals among them), who drove around the grounds in a truck with black plates, while workers, those who couldn’t get away with not working, filled the truck with groceries: Soviet cognac, condensed milk, butter, sacks of flour and pasta, boxes of candies and cakes. After the truck passed the checkpoint without obstacle, it rolled in the direction of the Eastern Borderlands and finally unloaded on the right bank of the Western Bug River. The patrons of the party got part of the money, something was thrown to the director of the factory, and everything else was divided and spent on booze. At the same time, Felix collected payments at the central market. They resold purchases there, provisions bought from the villagers. The payments were small, but the market was big. Sometimes he took goods instead of the money. A silver-haired Azerbaijani with a missing ear got him sweet peppers and tomatoes. Fat-bottomed Ada specialized in meat. One agreeable old man brought eggs and farmer’s cheese directly to Felix’s apartment.

The building he lived in was right across from the market. It was a new, brick building from ’86 with large bright rooms and glassed-in balconies. The neighbors were mostly officers of the 40th Army of the Soviet Ground Forces and their families. Felix got a three-room apartment on the fourth floor. His wife, Tanya, and daughter moved in while Felix was still stationed in Afghanistan. Just like a thousand of his army friends, he outfitted the apartment with Japanese appliances hauled on donkeys and camels by caravanners from Pakistan and covered the living room with a fluffy, patterned rug requisitioned from the Bagram market. The furniture, however, was from Romania, but beech wood, a bespoke order from the factory in Baia Mare. His wife took care of decorating the apartment. In the beginning, Felix did not care about the apartment, the appliances, not even the rug, though he had taken a long time selecting it and was anxious about it, asking the seller detailed questions and bargaining for each afghani, and having reached an acceptable price, he came away with it for free. And when he returned, he still did not care. He was used to an austere life; he couldn’t care less about the cozy apartment. Then he came to his senses, looked around, but it was too late to change anything.

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ARTEM CHEKH is a Ukrainian author and soldier. He is the author of some sixteen books, including Absolute Zero, and his work has been translated into English, Polish, Czech, and Russian. Chekh is currently serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

ANNOUNCING SEVEN STORIES PRESS x TWO DOLLAR RADIO

April 15, 2025, New York, NY – Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon and Two Dollar Radio publisher Eric Obenauf announce today the acquisition of Two Dollar Radio, an Ohio-based independent, by New York City-based Seven Stories.

Founded in 2005 by Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf, Two Dollar Radio publishes bold works of literary fiction and essay collections. Eric Obenauf joins Seven Stories as publisher of the Two Dollar Radio imprint, which will continue to publish four to six original titles per year on average, including their New Classics series.

Penguin Random House Distribution Services will be tasked with sales and distribution in the U.S., Canada and globally, beginning January 1st, 2026. In the UK, sales and distribution will be with Turnaround Distribution.

Ingram Distribution Services will continue to sell and distribute the Two Dollar Radio list through 2025.*

Also joining Seven Stories is Two Dollar Radio staffer Brett Gregory, who will act as publicity and marketing coordinator for the Two Dollar Radio imprint and for certain Seven Stories titles.

Co-founder Eliza Wood-Obenauf will continue to work on special projects. The Obenaufs and Gregory will work remotely from Ohio.

Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, a bookstore and café, will remain under the ownership of the Obenaufs.

“Seven Stories has been one of our literary polestars since before we launched Two Dollar Radio,” Obenauf says. “I’m a great admirer of their list, and I believe that ours complements theirs in very intriguing ways. I look forward to being a part of their team, and to learn from them and their expertise. It’s been a sometimes exhausting and yet monstrously rewarding journey to reach this point, and Eliza and I couldn’t be more thrilled to strengthen Two Dollar Radio under the Seven Stories umbrella so that it can continue to prosper for the next twenty years and beyond.”

Simon adds, “Eric and I are very similar in that we personalize our work to an extreme degree. This has its advantages and its disadvantages, but on the plus side it can inspire loyalty in our authors and colleagues and strengthens our ability to be really good editors and publishers. I deeply admire the twenty-year history of Two Dollar Radio and all that Eric and Eliza Jane have done here. I’m also really interested in their aesthetic and cool sense that literature belongs in a fundamental way in contemporary life.”

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READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Dan Simon, the publisher of Seven Stories Press in New York City and Eric Obenauf, the publisher of Two Dollar Radio in Columbus, Ohio have announced that Seven Stories has acquired Two Dollar Radio. The acquisition was finalized on April 1 and the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Two Dollar Radio, which releases four to six frontlist titles each year and has approximately 80 titles in print, becomes Seven Stories’ fourth imprint, joining its Spanish-language imprints Siete Cuentos and Ocean Sur, and children’s imprint, Triangle Square Books for Young Readers. Obenauf remains publisher and editorial director, while his spouse, Eliza Wood-Obenauf remains consulting editor. Brett Gregory will continue to coordinate marketing and publicity for Two Dollar Radio, and also serve as marketing and publicity manager for Seven Stories. The trio will work remotely from Columbus.

Obenauf and Wood-Obenauf retain ownership of Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, the bookstore/café/bar they have operated in Columbus since 2017.

With the deal, Simon remains the majority owner of Seven Stories, while Obenauf and Wood-Obenauf have become minority partners as have Seven Stories national sales director Bill Rusin and co-publisher/publicity director Ruth Weiner. “It’s an acquisition,” Simon told PW in an interview conducted with him and Obenauf. “At the same time, it’s an initial step toward there being multiple stakeholders here and minority partners.”

Obenauf said he and Wood-Obenauf regard the transition as “sort of the next generation of Two Dollar Radio.” He noted that while operating a small indie press “is incredibly rewarding,” it "can also be incredibly mentally exhausting, [especially] if you don't have access to gobs of capital.” He and Wood-Obenauf launched Two Dollar Radio in 2005 because, he said, “we just wanted to work on books; we just wanted to edit books and work with authors, and that sort of thing.”

“Our authors and our books aren't benefiting when we're spending all of our time poring over spreadsheets and just trying to exist on a day to day basis,” he said, “So we see this as the next iteration of Two Dollar Radio that doesn’t just benefit our books and authors, but also sustains Two Dollar Radio into the future for the next 20 years and beyond.”

Two years in the making

Obenauf reached out to Simon two years ago to discuss the possibility of Seven Stories acquiring Two Dollar Radio. The two first met in 2009 at BookExpo America, and Simon was instrumental in helping Two Dollar Radio obtain U.K. distribution with Turnaround Publisher Services. Obenauf noted that there is a “great confluence” between Seven Stories and Two Dollar Radio, both in their approaches to publishing and in their lists. Seven Stories is known for its mix of literature and politics with a decidedly left-wing bent, while Two Dollar Radio is renowned for its quirky, edgy list of primarily fiction and essay collections.

“It was incredibly important that Two Dollar Radio remain independent,” Obenauf said. “Being acquired by one of the multinational corporations wasn’t ever something that we considered. We wanted to feel invested continuing forward, not just with Two Dollar Radio, but with Seven Stories as well.”

"Eric and I really are true believer publishers in exactly the same way,” Simon added. "It's so personal for him, and that's like looking in the mirror for me; it's so personal to me. I think it strengthens our ability to be really good editors and publishers, and I think that the loyalty of our authors to Seven Stories and to Two Dollar Radio reflects this."

Simon praised Two Dollar Radio for “punching way above its weight” by publishing such authors as Hanif Abdurraqib, Nora Lange, Bennett Sims, and many other critically-acclaimed writers. “At the same time,” he said, “it’s a manageable entity, in relationship to our size.” Two Dollar Radio will continue to be distributed by PGW through the fall, and then will switch to Seven Stories’ distributor, Penguin Random House Distribution Services, on January 1, 2026. Turnaround will continue to distribute Two Dollar Radio in the U.K.

Reflecting upon the acquisition – the first in Seven Stories’ 30-year history – Simon said both presses "are kind of alternative in the best sense: we’re not part of the club. We're most excited when we want to publish something that nobody else wants to publish. You know, we're very rarely in an auction situation. I have so much respect for so many independent publishers, but at the same time, I don't want to be part of the club. And Two Dollar Radio is certainly not part of the club; after all, they're in Columbus, Ohio.”

With the addition of Two Dollar Radio, Simon said, Seven Stories "has an extraordinary brain trust now, including Eric, Eliza Jane, and Brett. We, I think, are positioned for success and growth -- it's the only way to survive in this pretty merciless marketplace that we're in.”

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SEVEN STORIES PRESS is an independent publisher based in New York City specializing in literature and politics, for adults and children, in English and Spanish. Besides the Seven Stories adult imprint there is Triangle Square Books for Young Readers and the Ocean Sur and Siete Cuentos imprints for Spanish language titles. Among its authors are Nelson Algren, Octavia Butler, Artem Chapeye, Noam Chomsky, Liliana Corobca, Angela Davis, Ariel Dorfman, Alan Dugan, Annie Ernaux, Barry Gifford, Barbara McQuade, Clyo Mendoza, Lee Stringer, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Zinn, and many others. Awards include the 2022 Nobel Prize for Annie Ernaux, the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry for Alan Dugan, the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for Kia Corthron’s The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, and countless others.

Over the last twenty years, books from TWO DOLLAR RADIO have been honored by the National Book Foundation, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and named finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and more. Us Fools by Nora Lange was shortlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction; Other Minds and Other Stories by Bennett Sims was a finalist for The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize in 2024; They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib’s breakout, genre-defying 2017 essay collection, has appeared in music videos, as a B-side to a single by The National and Julien Baker, and was adapted into an ESPN film.

 

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For further information, please contact Ruth Weiner, ruth@sevenstories.com.

*All orders and returns of TDR books should be processed through PGW/Ingram until 1/1/2026.

March 31st marks Trans Day of Visibility. Created in 2010 by trans advocate and human rights activist Rachel Crandall, Trans Day of Visibility is a celebration of the extraordinary lives and cultural contributions of trans people. It is also a moment to acknowledge and campaign against the disproportionate levels of discrimination, violence, and political repression faced by trans communities all over the world, and especially in the United States in 2025.

To mark the occasion, we are proud and excited to share an exclusive excerpt from our forthcoming new edition of Hello Cruel World by the iconic Kate Bornstein. This excerpt, an afterword written by trans writer, theorist, and advocate Paul B. Preciado, specifically speaks to the importance of representation as a way of offering an option for people who may find themselves at odds with their assigned gender. As he says in the latter half of the afterword, "Knowing our own desire requires research, experimentation, invention, and risk." In other words: it requires having access to the knowledge that gender is not fixed and can be transformed. It requires a sort of visibility. This is especially important given the newly emboldened right-wing effort to silence, criminalize, and even disappear the very notion of gender variance — criminalizing not only gender-affirming care and trans pedagogy, but removing the concept of trans existence from public schools and libraries. Visibility is important to combatting these efforts: in many ways, it is the first step to fighting back. 

The 20th anniversary edition of trans trailblazer Kate Bornstein’s unconventional guide to staying alive for teens, freaks, and gender outlaws.

This new edition of Bornstein's groundbreaking Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 121 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the controversial, fun, challenging, and easy. Encouraging readers to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings the reader on a self-validating journey and toward a resounding decision to embrace life.

Suicide rates among LGBTQ+ teens are much higher than for their cis peers; with love and humor and confession and insight, Bornstein hopes to keep every freak out there alive. She is a radical role model, an affectionate best friend, and a guiding mentor all in one. This one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive is a much-needed, sometimes unorthodox approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, and alive.

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HELLO CRUEL WORLD (SECOND EDITION)
101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws
BY KATE BORNSTEIN

AFTERWORD BY PAUL B. PRECIADO
Translated by Jayrôme C. Robinet 

Some babies are born with a star on the wrong side. Like Kate Bornstein, I was born into a family with strong religious beliefs — hers was Jewish, mine Catholic. She was born in 1948 in an America characterized by McCarthyism, the persecution of homosexuals, and racial segregation. I was born in 1970 in Franco’s Spain. I spent the Saturdays of my childhood at church while others went to the disco. We Catholic children read the Bible, staged plays inspired by the lives of the saints, prepared packs of aniseed doughnuts which we sold on Sundays at church. Everything was separated by gender: boys studied to be altar boys, varnished wooden clothespins, and assembled them into crosses; girls embroidered their names on white handkerchiefs. Some children grew up with a star nailed to the palm of their hand. I loved Masses, the rituals, the glow of candles, the smell of incense, the body of Christ and Mary Magdalene’s hair, the water turned into wine, the retreat of the enlightened in the desert, the apostles who became polyglot when they were filled with the Holy Spirit coming in the form of a dove and the apparitions of the angels. But I hated sewing. My handkerchiefs were dirty rags filled with knots.

Some teens grow up with a star staked through their heart. On my tenth birthday, two events occurred, both unexpected and unfortunate: I fell in love with my friend Elena, and Elena fell in love with Leo, the only Black boy in town. We both had the worst summer of our lives. I sought refuge in Luis Cernuda’s poems. Elena ended up dating Tomás, a white neighbor. Leo and I didn’t date anyone. Shortly thereafter, Leo’s parents moved to another city. That’s how I realized love wouldn’t be easy for me. Nor for Leo. And, perhaps, not even for Elena. Another day of the same year, in winter, a group of boys was waiting for me after school. They shouted “tortillera” (dyke) as they threw a snowball in my face. The ice burned my cheeks. I wasn’t surprised that they insulted me, I was surprised that they knew I was a lesbian before I’d gone out with anyone. I wiped my face and continued on my way as if nothing had happened. Some teens grow up with a star stuck to their foreheads. I went home and locked myself in my room. At home, the situation wasn’t better: my mother, alerted by a nun about my “male behavior” (what did they actually mean?) was monitoring my actions, choosing my clothes, judging my friendships.

What did others really know about my desire? I grew up thinking that I was a monster and that if I didn’t run away the others would end up killing me. At that time, my only political body of freedom was imagination: when the door to my room was closed, I dreamed that aliens would come to my town and save me. The problem is not that you can’t do something, but that you can’t even imagine it. The aliens were like me: skinny and kind monsters who wrote poems and mathematical equations, beings who were neither men nor women, neither animals nor humans, neither white nor black. But the aliens never came, and back then, in a small town in northern Spain, there was no organization, no book that could help me. I think I was still a teenager when I made the decision to leave and never come back. Seven years later, I began a sexual and intellectual exile that led me from book to book, from place to place, from language to language, from identity to identity, until I became what I am now.

On this road, in the different passages of the deserts of the norm that I have crossed and keep on crossing, Kate Bornstein’s books and performances have been like stars in a night sky for monsters in exile. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (1994) was one of my bedside books when I was twenty years old in New York. In the 1990s I self-identified as “tortillera.” I reclaimed the slur with which I had been insulted in my childhood, but like Kate I felt neither male nor female. Unlike the queer academic books of Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis, or Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Gender Outlaw was a true first-person cartography of dissent: the diary of a survivor of gender and sexuality, a navigation manual for the beginners and the migrants. Kate was able to talk to my injured inner child and encourage him to explore a new territory: desire beyond sexual and gender binaries. Little by little, and against the expectations of my Catholic teachers, her life and work would be the equivalent of what, in the tradition of devotion, was the life of the saints. For me, Kate Bornstein became Saint Trans of Gender Outlaws, Saint Masochist of Good Love, Saint Borderline of Freaks and Suicides.

On September 11, 1998, I went to listen to Kate Bornstein’s presentation of her book My Gender Workbook in New York. At the end of the reading, I overcame my shyness to ask if she would give me her address so I could invite her to participate in a publication. Kate immediately pulled out a business card and handed it to me. I put it in my pocket, happy to have her home address, and it was only several years later that I realized there was no postal address or phone number on the card. There were only three words printed: Kate Bornstein. Traveling. Some monsters carry stars in their pocket. This card is a political fetish that still accompanies me. The absence of an address, telephone, or profession was an active resistance to the imposition of an identity, a hymn to freedom: Kate Bornstein was on a journey.

To a specific theory of gender or sexual identity, Kate Bornstein opposes a general philosophy of travel. According to her, we are not male or female, heterosexual or homosexual: we are travelers. Sexual or gender identity is only a “means of transport”: An identity, she says, is used for taking you somewhere . . . but it cannot take you to all places. If you want to go elsewhere, you will have to change your identity. To live is to leave the known place of assigned identity and norm and begin to explore the unknown territory of desire. This is the paradox that Bornstein confronts us with: in order to know our own desire, it is necessary to dare to change, because the ready-to-wear desire, the desire based on a fixed identity, has been territorialized by power and imposed through norm, violence, and abuse. Knowing our own desire requires research, experimentation, invention, and risk. To know our own desire means abandoning our assigned identity and going on a journey.

This philosophy of travel is based on a psychobiological theory of transformation: in the same way that the chameleon is characterized by its ability to shift skin colors in order to adapt to its environment, the human being, with its linguistic complexity and cerebral plasticity, is characterized by the ability to change, to learn, and to modify itself. Against the tide, Bornstein teaches us that what is natural for human beings is not identity, but shift. It is power over, with its ambition to control the processes of reproduction, that prevents identity from shifting.

Gender Outlaw and My Gender Workbook helped me overcome the fear of transforming my subjectivity by taking testosterone. Her books helped me overcome the fear of changing my voice, my name, and my body. Fear of being judged, rejected, or persecuted. For those of us who have taken to the road and begun a gender transition at the beginning of the new millennium, Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg are our grandparents; Del LaGrace Volcano and Ashley Hans Scheirl are our older brothers. Bornstein and Feinberg invented a language, they made it possible to have a body, opened a path. Volcano and Schreil invented an aesthetic, an image. Some of us walk with a thousand bright stars above our heads.

Bornstein’s politics, as presented here in Hello, Cruel World, is a broad feminism in which the category “transgender” serves as a means by which to transcend and overcome differences in identity. Bornstein teaches us that the first duty of a feminist is not to defend the identity of “woman,” but to defend the freedom to transgress what society expects of us. The prime directive of a feminist is to survive the imperative of death faced by sexual and gender minorities. Bornstein rejects medical and legal categories and replaces them with political definitions: feminists, homosexuals, and transsexuals are “transgender” to the extent that they transgress heteropatriarchal norms. The proposal is to go beyond identity politics (feminist, gay, lesbian, trans) in which everyone identifies with the identity that oppresses them in order to build a transversal alliance of dissidents of sexuality, gender, class, race, disability . . .

There is another social group that Bornstein considers to be transgender: teens. Neither children nor adults, neither totally submissive nor totally free, teens are gender mutants whose gender is in a constant shift, and so they suffer like no other social group from the pressure of the norm. Hence the wave of teenage suicides that succumb each year to the imperative of becoming male, female, and heterosexual. Hello, Cruel World is also a love letter addressed to teens. But it is not a book just for teenagers aged thirteen to nineteen years old. For Kate Bornstein, adolescence is not an age or syndrome, but the moment when our ability to mutate is expressed with the most vehemence, grace, and fragility, just before being silenced by society. This book is written for the teen locked inside each of us: the one who has lost their dream, forgotten their infinite desire for transformation, the one who has gotten used to accepting the desires of others rather than pursuing their own. Hello, Cruel World is for the teen who still lives in you. Now open this book, and travel.

—Paul B. Preciado
September 17, 2018
Venice, Italy