On 16 September 2001, a few days after the attacks on New York and Washington, the Palestinian American scholar, critic, and activist, Edward Said, compared America’s “war on terror” with Captain Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick. A quarter of a century later, with the world at war and genocide raging in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it is a fitting time to recall Said’s quote at length.
Said wrote, “What is most depressing, however, is how little time is spent trying to understand America's role in the world, and its direct involvement in the complex reality beyond the two coasts that have for so long kept the rest of the world extremely distant and virtually out of the average American's mind. You'd think that 'America' was a sleeping giant rather than a superpower almost constantly at war, or in some sort of conflict, all over the Islamic domains. Osama bin Laden's name and face have become so numbingly familiar to Americans as in effect to obliterate any history he and his shadowy followers might have had before they became stock symbols of everything loathsome and hateful to the collective imagination. Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick, rather than what is going on, an imperial power injured at home for the first time, pursuing its interests systematically in what has become a suddenly reconfigured geography of conflict, without clear borders, or visible actors. Manichaean symbols and apocalyptic scenarios are bandied about with future consequences and rhetorical restraint thrown to the winds.”
Unwritten Lives is a space for lost, displaced, destitute, erased, suppressed, and forgotten stories, and the brave creators who make them. Our title and subtitle are inspired by the mid-19th century American novel, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Although it has become Melville’s most famous work, hailed as a monumental achievement today, the novel’s initial reception in 1851 was unremarkable, leaving the literary establishment confounded at the time of its release. Still, the novel’s enduring central themes of heterogeneous camaraderie, people and their environment, the trials of human existence, the nature of good and evil, the qualities of good leadership, and the tensions between appearance and reality have proved prescient. Moby Dick was a novel ahead of its times, only garnering recognition in the more culturally dynamic 1920s, seventy years after its initial publication. Today, almost two centuries later, in an age of artificial intelligence, disinformation, hypocritical western political leadership partial to global injustice, and excessive privilege for a very few, the central questions posed by the novel remain urgent: What is truth? What is fake? What does it mean to be authentic? What is required to cooperate and survive as a diverse group against the odds? Who poses the real threat: the hunter, or the hunted?
History consistently demonstrates that these are dangerous questions to ask. Posing them cost Melville dearly. Publishing Moby Dick took its toll. Still, we are not deflected. We remain committed to subversive questioning and the quest for truth, just as Melville was, till the end. At the time of his death from a heart attack in 1891, aged 72, he was living in such obscurity, many had thought him already dead. He was in fact working on Billy Budd, Sailor, the tragedy of a loyal sailor who faces an unjust trial after being falsely accused of mutiny. Once again, the novella explores ideas of justice and truth, themes that preoccupied Melville throughout his long and difficult life, a life during which he also lost two young sons, Malcolm to suicide at the age of eighteen, and Stanwix—a seaman—to tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six. One of the novella’s most famous quotes, characterising the raw and dangerous nature of truth, has travelled like an arrow through the arc of time, shattering deceptions that signify our own era: “Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its jagged edges.” In the digital age, those for whom truth is threat have employed their vast resources to navigate around its inconvenient and jagged edges by simply fabricating “truths” of their own, falsehoods to aid their egotistical and self-serving causes, whilst disguising themselves as defenders of freedom of speech. We see through their duplicitous and intellectually dishonest camouflage. What they are, are tyrants. Novels like Moby Dick may be thick, but when ethics, morality, and decency are relegated as niche concerns, civilisation becomes a paper-thin veneer, ready for them to rip apart. What follows is the abyss, descent to the soundtrack of Wagner.
Obsession is another key theme of Moby Dick, and for us at Unwritten Lives, these are the questions that preoccupy and obsess us. With our publication, we aim to shatter the fake veneer, to penetrate the superficial surface, and, as Melville wrote in Moby Dick, we aim to “strike through the mask of things”. We push back on narratives of exclusion, exploitation, elitism, marginalisation, and abuse by challenging the simplistic stereotypes, dominant orthodoxies, blind privileges, and mainstream omissions that drive and enable them.
A resistance publication, we do more than resist; we strive for change and transformation. We are a landing space for ideas that come to us on dinghies and small boats. We publish stories from disenfranchised and marginalised people whose ideas and concerns are not normally represented in the mainstream media.
Unwritten Lives covers a sweeping range of global themes, including Childhood & Development / Family, Friendships & Relationships / Race, Ethnicity & Identity / Gender & Sexuality / Caste, Tribe & Class / Community & Environment / Poverty & Privilege / Politics & Social Justice / Crime & Punishment / Society & Social Groups / Education & Livelihoods / Art & Culture / Science & Technology / Travel & Migration / Body & Mind / Well-being & Trauma / War & Conflict / Life, Death & Grief.
We also explore how people and communities continue to experience exclusion and marginalisation during the second quarter of the 21st century, and how they organise resistance and survival, especially in the digital age.
We feature authentic global contributions across of range of genres created by real people, especially those who have experienced strife and struggle, and for whom life has been tough: the unsung heroes, the marginalised, disenfranchised, and other minority groups, the bullied and ostracised, people who have fluid or divergent experiences of identity and self, and people living with disabilities and mental health circumstances, whatever they may be.
We also welcome submissions from people who—whether as individuals or as groups—have been excluded, ostracised or failed by the nation state: Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities, internally displaced people, refugees, tribal people, Indigenous peoples, and First Nations. Unwritten Lives is a space to have your say on matters related to society, education, technology, and any other issue bridging us to an uncertain future.
Creativity is an arduous process, accompanied by a lot of questioning and, at times, almost crippling self-doubt. To transcend that, we are here to inspire confidence and challenge cliquish elitism that instils needless anxiety and self-doubt in many young creators. We especially welcome contributions from budding and first-time writers. Knowing that creativity is not an outcome, but a process, we also encourage you to bring your scraps, scribbles, notes, and rejects to us. If we think you are onto something, we would love to work with you to cultivate them for publication on our site.
Unwritten Lives aims to build connections through dissent and resistance. While we do not shy away from difficult topics like addiction, self-harm, and suicide, we are also a kind, safe, and inclusive space. We aim to cultivate a community of writers, artists, and creatives who share our values of equity, diversity, and inclusion. While we acknowledge that anger is usually a manifestation of underlying pain, we do not tolerate discrimination, prejudice, racism, aggression, or violence of any kind, either towards our team or our contributors.
We would like to pay homage to the shoulders on which we stand, like the poet Audre Lorde, whose poem A Litany for Survival is a rallying cry for us.
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
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