Bottomfish Blues Archive

Bottomfish Blues was an underground Amazon feminist newspaper published from the mid-80s to the early 90s, working within the same anti-colonial political trend that would later produce Butch Lee and Red Rover’s Night-Vision. Taking up the slogan “Amazon Nation or Aryan Nation,” the paper sought to not just highlight and but also combat the complicity of white women in anti-Black genocide – as one of the authors later put it, Bottomfish Blues represented the efforts of “some radical euro-settler women in trying to sound the alarm.” In that light, we aren’t putting these up because we think they are above criticism – but because they look at some problems still with us much more honestly than many others (and that’s still the case today, which might say something in itself), and in that their flaws can be as much things to learn from as their strengths.

Selected essays from the newspaper were first reprinted in book form in the 1993 Vagabond Press collection Bottomfish Blues: The Coming of Black Genocide and Other Essays. Another set of essays were reshaped, revised and expanded into Butch Lee’s The Military Strategy of Women and Children. In 2014, Kersplebedeb republished two essays alongside an important new essay from Butch Lee and J. Sakai, “The Ideas of Black Genocide in the Amerikkkan Mind,” as Amazon Nation or Aryan Nation: White Women and the Coming of Black Genocide, which is available to purchase here.

This archive has issues 1, 2, 4, and 5 of Bottomfish Blues right now. We have included a list of article titles for each issue. If you have a copy of issue 3 or a lead on one, or any other related publications (did they stop at 5?), please get in touch!

Bottomfish Blues, No. 1, 1987
… AIDS and Black Genocide
… War Against Women
… America, Amerika, Amerikkka

Bottomfish Blues, No. 2, Spring 1987
… The Martinique is Koch’s Success
… Bit of History
… You Can’t Go Home Again
… US Certified Violence
… Lou Lou and the Cops

Bottomfish Blues, No. 4, Summer 1989
… Lords and Warlords (and us)
… Rote Zora
… The Red, White and Blue of “Black Anti-Semitism”
… The Role of Women and Children in the Armed Struggle, Chapter One
… Killer Kops?
… Editorial [on voting and abortion]

Bottomfish Blues, No. 5, Summer 1990
… Integration: “Learn a Way to Say Good-Bye”
… The Code of Silence
… Amazons! Our Amazon Heritage
… The Role of Women and Children in the Armed Struggle, Chapter Two
… The Role of Women and Children in the Armed Struggle, Chapter Three