April 5, 2013 | by Kai M Green— "I have experienced the demands of Black masculinity and the responses to my failure to perform properly are not alI that different from the experiences of failed masculinity that I felt within Black lesbian communities. But it is true, I am now a young Black American Male. People usually assume that I am somewhere between the age of 15 and 20. I'm 28. The world is unkind to Black bois. The world is unkind to Black girls. But the way our gendered bodies are policed is different."

Most written chronicles of history, and most speculative stories, put rulers, conquerors, and invaders front and center. People with less power, money, or status—enslaved people, indigenous people, people of color, queer people, laborers, women, people with disabilities, the very young and very old, and religious minorities, among others—are relegated to the margins. Today, mainstream history continues to perpetuate one-sided versions of the past while mistelling or erasing the stories of the rest of the world. There is a long and honorable legacy of literary resistance to erasure. This anthology partakes of that legacy. It will feature stories from the margins of speculative history, each taking place between 1400 and the early 1900s and putting a speculative twist—an element of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or the unclassifiably strange—on real past events.