One of the stories in Gwen E. Kirby's collection Shit Cassandra Saw is written in the voice of Mary Read, also known as Mark Read, an English woman who often lived as a man and sailed the seas as a pirate. Little is known for certain about Read — much of what is said about her is taken from Captain Charles Johnson's book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724), most of which is believed to be apocryphal. According to Johnson, Read's mother was married to a sailor with whom she had a son. Both her husband and her son died, and she dressed Mary, whom she had out of wedlock with another man, as her dead half-brother so she could receive an inheritance from her former mother-in-law.

Around age 13, Mary began working odd jobs on ships, continuing to present herself as male. In the ensuing years, she joined the Army of Flanders (a Spanish army based in the Netherlands), and fell in love with a soldier. She revealed herself to be a ...