This weekend, I had the most fun tabling at Ravenswing DIY Fair.  I stocked up on tons of great zines, and expected to make a couple of pity sales at best, since Ottawa has not hitherto demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm for zines.  I was surprised and delighted to sell out of zines and to meet and chat with lots of rad people. 

One of the people I met was Alanna, who was tabling with her zines Puker Nation and Backwaves.  She is super friendly and outgoing, and I had already been looking forward to checking out her zine.  Since I designed the program for the fair, I knew she was The Other Zine Person, and I was excited that there was one.

She is also still in her teens, which is Awesome.  I’m trying to write this paragraph without sounding condescending, or like a grizzled old-timer, and probably won’t succeed.  It’s been six years since I was a teenager, and I recently told off some Teens for the first time in my adult life.  They were on the 86 bus, throwing pine cones, which— as I told them— is a dumb thing to do.  Also, they should get off my lawn.

So does it not make you feel good in the cockles of your heart that at least one teenager in the world is making handwritten zines about punk rock instead of whatever inscrutable internet stuff other teens are presumably into?  Do you not also feel a twinge of regret that you spent your teen years lighting stuff on fire, cussing at strangers, or trying to snort things you found in the chemistry room? 


Puker Nation!
Issue #3, November 2010
12 pg., half-legal size

Puker Nation is Alanna’s now-defunct general zine, which ran for nine issues, which are now all available online at her Tumblr.  In issue 3, she writes about how much she loves the Germs (with an illustration of Darby Crash rocking out), a review of Troll 2 (“There isn’t even one troll in the whole thing!”), and book and record reviews.  The reviews feature illustrations of the covers, which is awesome.  A review of Energy by Operation Ivy is included, although she inexplicably singles out “Bad Town” as the album’s one unsuccessful track.  Maybe she likes bad towns?

Issue #9, May 2011
12 pg., half-legal size

Issue #9 is a themed issue on glam rock, finding Alanna lamenting the genre’s current lack of favour: “What we need are more people who care more about Mott the Hoople than they do about ironic tattoos”.

In Puker Nation #9, you will find a comic about a muffin, a “What Kind of Glam Rocker Are You?” quiz (“Mostly A’s:  You’re Marc Bolan!  You will tell everyone you spent time with a French wizard, get fat, then die.”)  She also reviews Velvet Goldmine, a movie I also enjoyed as a teen, although she unleashes the bizarre and upsetting fact that Radiohead’s Thom Yorke apparently did guest vocals in the film. 

Again, there are reviews with hand-wrought illustrations of the books and record reviewed.  I particularly liked that she critiqued Ottawa band Mother’s Children’s record That’s Who for lasting less time than it takes to eat a salad. 

Backwaves: A Zine About Richard Simmons
16 pg. at quarter-letter size

Backwaves is Alanna’s current project.  As she explains the title:

“A backwave is one of Richard’s signature moves.  It’s kind of like a pelvic thrus, but you arch your back a lot more.  I have never seen this done in any other exercise tape and/or class ever.  Weird!”

The zine is a pocket-size collection of illustrated reviews of Richard Simmons videos, critiqued on the basis of set, routine, outfits, best lines, and “sweat-a-bility”.  She praises Sweatin’ to the Oldies 2 for ending with “what is, quite possibly, the only upbeat and not totally pseudo-spiritual cool-down”, and Sweatin’ to the Oldies 3 for its admirable circus-themed set.  Actually, she is pretty strongly in favour of the tapes in general, so if you are looking for a hard-hitting critique of R. Simmons, you will have to look elsewhere.

If you feel the least bit of nostalgia for being a teenager and buying silly videos at thrift stores, watching cult movies, and loving your favourite bands whole-heartedly, this is for you.  (Likewise, if you ARE a teenager, or if you are a full-on adult who also likes these things.)  These zines are really fun, and it made me happy to read them. 

- Lily Pepper

6:09 am  •  29 May 2012  •  3 notes

Chris Landry will be giving a workshop on zine culture and zine-making at Ravenswing DIY Fair in Minto Park, on Elgin St. in Ottawa, on Sunday, May 27th.  Learn more at the Les Ateliers tumblr.

Kiss Off, Issue #14, Fall 2011

by Chris Landry

28 pg. at 1/4 letter size.

$2 from Parcell Press

Granted, this review serves a sinister double purpose: I do wanna encourage any Ottawa folks who may be reading this to come out to the DIY fair this Sunday.  Chris Landry will be there giving a workshop on zines, I will be there with a table-o-zines, and lots of other people will be doing, selling, or performing neat stuff.  However, this zine is also really great, and I am happy to be here, today, on the Internet, telling you so.

Kiss Off— or at least this issue— is a little, quarter-letter, bite-size zine.  Those can be a profoundly dissatisfying ten minutes of entertainment if done poorly, or a just-right little mouthful of prose if well-executed.  I’m glad to report that Kiss Off is the latter.

Landry’s writing is crisp and economical, he succinctly evokes places and states of mind with a minimum of description. 

In this case, the places are Toronto, where Landry lives, and the Ottawa area, where he’s from.  Completed in the fall of 2011, the zine describes the lead-up to, and the fall-out from, the G-20 summit, and feelings of resilience and burn-out among activists.   Rather than writing a diatribe on something his readers have probably already heard a lot about, Landry instead gestures towards situations and feelings, which is very effective.

There is also writing about Alice Munro, about what it’s like to go to a really good show, and to a mediocre show, and about getting a poor haircut from an excellent man.  I really like this kind of slice-of-life writing when it is done well, as it is here, and gives a clear, affecting sense of the writer’s life.

Like its content, Kiss Off’s layout is crisp and handsome.  It distills elements of zine style— typewritten text, images blown up to abstraction on the photocopier— to their extremes.  The result is legible and stylish but still true to the allegiances Landry states on the inside front cover of this issue: “Kiss Off is a punk rock fanzine”. 

And it’s a very good one, so I will look forward to learning what I can from Chris Landry at his workshop this Sunday.

- Lily Pepper

2:22 pm  •  22 May 2012  •  5 notes

It’s a truism that no great art is ever made by committee, and in general our culture prizes the image of the solitary genius over the ideal of creative cooperation.  However, in the world of zines, collaboration is often as important as auteurship.  Lots of zines are co-authored, compiled from submissions, or written as splits among two authors.

The champion of zine collaboration has to be Chicago’s Jami Sailor (Wordpress, Tumblr, AV Club interview).  Most issues of her zine, Your Secretary, are published as splits with another writer, often a fledgling zine author.  It’s a pretty rad way of helping build community and helping people get their work out in the world.  Today I am writing on three zines made in part by Jami Sailor (I also wrote here about a split she did with Heather C. of Dig Deep.)

Brilliant Mistake #4/Your Secretary #8
Split between Carrie Colpits and Jami Sailor
52 pg. at 1/4 letter size
$3 from Stranger Danger or from Quimby’s

What we have here is a Valentine’s Day zine, specializing in the ways that love, ardour, and crushes can make you feel like a big ol’ dork.  Carrie and Jami alternate tales of heartbreak,  genitals, and awkwardness. 

It is very sweet and very funny, and who among us could say that they can’t relate to these tales.  I got stood up on Valentine’s Day once; another year after a bad February breakup, I was reduced to tears (which seemed absurd to me even at the time) by a flyer for a pizza place selling heart-shaped pies for the 14th.  Let’s call the whole thing off. 

The tone is set by the first story, in which Carrie writes about losing 80 pounds and the effects it hason her life and her libido:

“What I’m saying is I think about sex a lot and I’ve found the more I think about it the more silly ridiculous things involving penis happen to me.”

Jami contributes an excellent anecdote about being caught in grade school, expressing her true feelings for her classmates in tiny letters on her Scooby-Doo Valentines that I totally saw myself in.  Other topics include teenage crushes, Ira Glass, and about becoming interested in silly things (examples given: soccer, motor scooters, the Cure) in order to relate to a crush. 

This zine is printed on pink paper, has a screenprinted cover, and is bound with pink embroidery floss- it is a class act.  Buy one and save it for when you are feeling down, and it will lift your spirits.

Potty Language Vol. 1/Your Secretary #9
Split between Toni and Jami Sailor
32 pg. at half-letter size
$2 from Quimby’s

In this split, both writers talk about the experience of being a nanny!  They share some of the weird insights into class and race that this work affords, along with a lot of funny, scary, and sad glimpses into other people’s lives.  Toni also has a pretty great story about babysitting the daughter of an indie rock god (rhymes with Spleven Galkmus). 

Jami writes about nannying in Chicago’s suburban North Shore (by way of an explanation, she writes, “All of John Hughes’ movies take place in the North Shore”), and her overwhelming fear of lice.

This zine is illustrated by Virginia Paine of the vegan cooking zine Food Stamp Foodie, and there is also a comic by Leslie Perrine. 

I am a big fan of zines about work and zines that describe what it is like to do an interesting thing that I have never done, so I really liked this!

Pictured but not reviewed, for lack of time:  Archiving the Underground, Issue #1, Ed. Jenna Brager and Jami Sailor - this is a zine of interviews with people who do academic work around archiving zines.  Neat!

- Lily Pepper

9:02 pm  •  18 May 2012  •  6 notes

Simple History Series, Issue 5, May 2009:

Hawaii (1778-1959):  From Western Discovery to Statehood

by J. Gerlach

$3 from Doris Distro

It may have occurred to you that it’s weird for the United States of America to count among their number a couple of tropical islands over two thousand miles from the West Coast of North America. You may not have given it much more thought— maybe you aren’t American, or you are, but your school was squeamish of getting into the nitty-gritty of manifest destiny. 

If so, you will be well served by J. Gerlach’s Simple History of Hawaii (this is the spelling he uses, so I am using it in my review— officially, the state is spelled “Hawaii”; however, in the Hawaiian language, it is spelled “Hawai’i”).  You can see how things get real complicated real fast, which is why you should read this zine. 

[Note: I have an older edition of this zine, which I bought from Doris Distro.  Currently it is published in a handsome, glossy edition: unfortunately, from Microcosm Press, who I don’t buy from.  You’ll have to use your nog and make up your own mind on that one.] 

So, as its title indicates, this zine is intended for readers without a background in history or post-colonial studies or any such thing.  It is simply written and any five-dollar words are defined in footnotes.  I really really like the idea that people’s interest in learning about things does not necessarily correlate with their reading level, and think it is excellent and necessary for radical history and ideas to be written about in many ways for many people. 

As well, a friend of Gerlach’s who taught art at a middle school had his students illustrate the text, which is pretty great.

So, as you might expect, the history of Hawaii is an interesting, but horrifying and disspiriting story, which Gerlach describes succinctly and effectively.

He describes the culture and political of Hawaiian society before colonization and the elaborate series of manoeuvers that lead to its being a pawn in a variety of imperial conflicts and ultimately, the fiftieth State.

As usual in such things, nations’ political interests mingled with rampant global capitalism.  The part of Hawaii’s story that I found saddest and most interesting was the transition in the mid-1800s from a feudal system of land regulation to the Western model of land privatization.  In this crummy deal, half of Hawaii was given to its chiefs to reconcile, and the other half was given to the government to sell, mostly to foreigners for sugar plantations. 

In the 19th century, the native Hawaiian population, decimated by introduced diseases, fell to about 40,000, from around 300,000 in the late 1700s.  Thus, to work the sugar plantations, the land owners imported indentured servants from China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. 

Hawaii was subsequently annexed into the United States to prevent Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch, from ratifying a constitution that would give voting rights to all Hawaiian citizens.  Gerlach writes in the introduction to this zine that he chose Hawaii as a topic in part because it is “a crucial study in what empire-building looks like”.  It’d be hard to argue with that.

A map, included in this zine, showing the Hawaiian Islands in relation to Baja California in the East and New Zealand in the West is also very instructive.  We’re used to maps showing Hawaii beside the United States, but the political connection is not remotely borne out by geological proximity: Hawaii is nowhere near the other States.  It’s a really simple and helpful way to help you realize the strangeness of Hawaii’s statehood.

This zine is a great introduction to the history of Hawaii, and to colonial history in general, which will never, ever fail to barf up new-to-you stories of horrors and absurdities and atrocities.  It is a fruitful enterprise to look at a globe and wonder how those innocent land masses got carved up into nations, ridden with cities, and named for foreign saints and killers.  It’s good to have a simple, cogent guide like this zine to nudge you into those deep and unsavory waters.

- Lily Pepper

8:46 pm  •  14 May 2012  •  2 notes

The Visible Woman
Author not named.
26 pg. at half-letter size
$3 from Doris Distro

Five long years ago I was in school studying philosophy.  Mostly, I liked the general rigour of putting ideas together and taking them apart again, an activity that often has not much to do with the content of the ideas.  However, there were some ideas, writers, and ways of thinking about things that did manage to get under my skin.

One thing I really liked were philosophies of embodiment, writing on what it is like to have/be a body, going about your business in this world, and how bodies live out ideas like gender and race.  You can quibble about mind and ideas and stuff all you like, but bodies are definitely for real, and philosophy underestimates them when it dismisses them as big boring meat suits our minds walk around in.  But this is a zine review.

This zine is by an anonymous woman in her fifties, living in Greensboro, North Carolina.  The zine is about the cultural invisibility, for better or for worse, of women over 40 (or even younger).  It is about the experience of being an older female body, and it is candid, thoughtful, bitter, funny, and surprising.

Reading this zine I realized how little I know about living through motherhood, menopause, mammograms.  Women over 50 can be something of an unknown species to us young pups.  (You may or may not have a mother with you on this mortal coil, I don’t.)

The writer’s point, in this zine, is that women ‘of a certain age’, which is, after all, the majority of their life’s span, drop out of popular culture and off people’s radar.  This is good, in some ways, like being less the object of strictures about how to look and be.  However, it must also be alienating and frustrating not to see oneself reflected in or taken seriously by the culture you live in.

So, this writer is putting herself out for us to know, describing her body:  her thighs, her breasts, her feet, after surgery.  It’s a sustained and detailed description of a body people want to ignore.  Having felt her own body change over her life, and seen fads for body types come and go, the writer is kind to herself and appreciates what her body can do and the life it has lived, rather than dismissing its changes as flaws. 

The zine also opens with an extremely endearing sketch of her friendship with two other women:

“Among the three of us we have had five marriages, two divorces, four daughters, one son.  One of us has published a novel.  One of us has watched a husband die from testicular cancer.  Three of us have sat with children in the emergency room: car accident, drug overdose, alcohol poisoning… One of us wears a hearing aid.  One of us has a plane ticket to Thailand.  Sometimes on Saturdays after we have walked, we see each other again at the farmer’s market; we all like fresh tomatoes and goat cheese, but only one of us buys fresh bread.”

The Visible Woman made me wish I had a cool lady friend in her fifties.  It will make you want to talk to people to make sure that you understand how they live, and to put less stock in your reflexive notions of who they are.  You would like this zine.

- Lily Pepper

8:58 pm  •  9 May 2012  •  3 notes

Whoosh! The Zine for Whale Lovers

by Katherina Audley

Issue #3, March 2012

28 pg. at half-letter size

$3 from Quimby’s, also available from the author

Ordinarily, I use this space to talk about zines but also to preach a bit on things that concern me and that are also widely felt to be pretty important: the systems of oppression that govern our lives, the traumas people weather, and the constant boldness and vigilance required to lead a good life, whatever that turns out to be for you.  However, today it is my great delight to reviewWhoosh!  The Zine for Whale Lovers, which concerns whales and whale fanciers. 

My aim is not to belittle whales (for how could that even be done) or to dismiss their importance and seriousness.  I’m just saying that it is nice to step out of the world of human concerns for a spell, especially with a writer who dispenses insights such as:

“Whales aren’t pretty - they look like giant gray pickles”

Audley is a big whale fan and also a devoted traveler.  She recounts a whale-watching trip to Santa Barbara, and one to Patagonia to watch orcas kill sea lion pups. Her eyewitness accounts of whale antics are supplemented with fun whale facts.  There are also whale book reviews (“This book is straight up whale porn.”, and there is also an article about Michelle Berman, who is a whale coroner! 

Whoosh! rules, it is so much fun to read: full of stories, facts, and all-around joie de vivre/joie de baleine. It is also very true, in a offbeat way, to the original spirit of zines as fanzines, expressions of thankless ardour for one’s unsung heroes. 

When Audley isn’t seeking out whales or writing about them, she is also a professional viking, nesting expert, belly caster, and general Renaissance person.  Awesome!

I fervently want to live in a world where everyone has unique and esoteric interests and enthusiasms that they engage in and research and that spur them on to more and greater adventures.  I wish both that we encouraged this as a culture, and that people had the wherewithal, financially and personally, to be motivated by their passions and to share them with others via creative projects like zines. 

It’s usually pretty great to talk to someone with passionate interests, even/especially if they aren’t ones you share, but it is so little fun to talk to people who are always on about the teevee and the Local Sports Team.  I want more Katherina Audlies, more whale zines!

- Lily Pepper

7:15 pm  •  7 May 2012  •  4 notes

Hoax
Various contributors, ed.  Rachel & Sari

Issues 3-6 available on Etsy

Hoax zine is HUGE.  Issues are 60-80 pages, barely held together by its staples, with small type and narrow margins.  I would recommend buying an issue or two if you have a long bus trip in your future.  It would be a great boon if you were home sick.  In any case, you’d want to have a lot of time on your hands to spend with this zine. 

Due to the impressive girth of these zines, I became overwhelmed.  I put off reviewing them for a while after I ordered them.  They sat reproachfully on my desk.  What could I say, how could I do justice to so much content?  You’ll find below brief summaries of the four issues I ordered, the four of six that are currently in print. 

The editors are Rachel and Sari, who writes the zine You’ve Got A Friend in Pennsylvania.  They met in Baltimore directing the Vagina Monologues at their university. 

Many contributors to these issues do come from a university backround, and many refer to women’s studies classes as a big influence in their lives.  I think that you would most appreciate this zine if that is your background as well, since that is the background that informs a lot of the writing. 

However, contributors do make a sustained effort to recognize their privilege, and in general, to recognize the intersections of race, gender, class, and other systems of privilege and oppression.

Issue 3, “Feminism and Health”
64 pg. at half-letter size, May 2010

$2 from the editors, on Etsy

Issue three covers condescending doctors, body hair, the invention of Female Sexual Dysfunction, menstruation, addiction, incarcerated women, the DSM, pet health, sexual assault, eating disorders, home remedies, and other feminist issues in health.

Issue 4, “Feminism and Hirstories”
80 pg. at half-letter size, December 2010

$3 from the editors, on Etsy

In issue four, you will find writing about using, and not using a pen name, riot grrrl, domestic violence, the suffragette philosopher Jane Addams, Metelkova (which is a squat and social centre in Ljubjana, Slovenia), gay misogyny, women in ancient Rome, Brazilian sex tourism, COINTELPRO, Christian feminism, and more.

Issue 5, “Feminisms and Community”
72 pg. at half-letter size, May 2011

$3 from the editors, on Etsy

Issue five was my favourite of the four issues I’ve read.  It covers safe(r) spaces, queer land movements, girl-on-girl crime, suicide, how to deal gently with overenthusiastic new converts to feminism, environmental policy, talking to neighbours, the Amish community, food co-ops, and the co-editing of the zine.

Issue 6, “Feminisms and Communication”

76 pg. at half-letter size, November 2011

$3 from the editors, on Etsy

Issue 6 covers African American Vernacular English, self-righteousness, autobiographical comics, self-care, punk misogyny, open access to academic journals, the n-word, a critique of the concept of the “ally” to an oppressed group, Slutwalk, political correctness, shyness, and learning disabilities, among other aspects of communication.


Sari and Rachel are currently seeking submissions for issue 7, which will be on the theme of Change.  For more information and topic suggestions, you can refer to this post on the Hoax Tumblr.


- Lily Pepper

10:03 am  •  1 May 2012  •  11 notes

When Language Runs Dry: A Zine for People with Chronic Pain and their Allies

Various contributors, ed. Claire Barrera & Meredith Butner

Issue 1, 48 pg. at half-letter size.

Issue 4, 44pg. at half-letter size.

$4 per issue from the editors, on Etsy

When Language Runs Dry takes its name from a quotation from Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”: “Let a sufferer describe a pain in the heel to a doctor and language runs dry”.  In the essay, Woolf contends,

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light…it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no; … literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear.”

The aim of this zine is to provide a forum for that then-imaginary literature.  When Language Runs Dry collects prose and, in Issue 4, poetry, about the experience of chronic pain.

People who suffer from one of the conditions that fall under the umbrella of chronic pain face the additional challenge of having their suffering recognized and validated by medical practitioners, insurance companies, and other people in their lives.  The frustration and sense of disempowerment of not having one’s pain acknowledged is central to much of the writing collected here. 

As some of the contributors are also queer, trans, and/or racialized, they face additional trouble being respected and taken seriously by doctors.  When Language Runs Dry endeavours to give a radical critique of conceptions of pain, illness, treatment, and associated concepts like work, personal value, and care, of oneself and others, taking into account factors such as race, class, and gender. 

Chronic pain conditions, like but more so than other ailments, are at the crux of mind and body, obviously and intimately related to trauma, anxiety, and mental illness.  This is one of the most interesting things about them, but also one of the most difficult things for their sufferers, who endure not only the pain, but the struggle for credibility that comes from lacking a visible wound, a cut-and-dry etiology.

When Language Runs Dry has the advantage of offering a diversity of perspectives, experiences, and analyses.  As with any compilation and any given reader, it is likely that some of the pieces will interest and resonate with you, others not so much.  Zine nerds will also appreciate the piece by Cindy Crabb, which as per her usual is simple, honest, moving, and effective. 

The art throughout the two issues I read is unequivocally beautiful and compelling.   The layout is crisp and inviting, and the content is an innovative and varied look at an underappreciated topic. 

- Lily Pepper

5:37 pm  •  24 April 2012  •  2 notes

This week I’m reviewing two zines collaboratively made by Lewis Wallace, Micah Bazant, and others.  Both are free to download and are totally awesome.

Miklat Miklat: A Transformative Justice Zine

Ed. Lewis Wallace and Micah Bazant

28 pg. at half-letter size

Free to download [direct link to PDF], paper copies $3 from Quimby’s

So, you believe in prison abolition (right?).  You’re no fan of the police, and they probably don’t like you either.  You don’t think anything is gained by putting someone in prison when they do something wrong and you don’t feel like the presence of police sets a situation right or makes you safer.  What do you do when something goes wrong in your life or in your community?  Do you have a way of thinking about what happened in a way that makes sense?  Does your community have a way to fix itself and to help people feel OK again?

This zine collects ten stories from various writers and sources.  Each centres around the theme of transformative justice and draws out some aspect of the concept or process.  As the editors explain, “Some of them are sad, some are ambiguous, some are stories of failure, and some are examples of concrete organizing towards transformative models of justice.” 

The rhetorical structure of this zine is pretty neat.  It takes as its inspiration two concepts from the Talmud, the Scapegoat, and the City of Refuge.  By juxtaposing these two concepts, they aim to zero in on some of the concepts and thought processes that guide the way we think about trauma, justice, and healing.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of the scapegoat, the individual or entity who cleanses a community of its transgressions by taking them on and being cast out.  The zine’s editors give this metaphor a radical gloss:

 “Scapegoating may give an impression of a cleansed, pure or “safe” community, but what  happens to the goat? And what about the memories—the unhealed wounds and unspoken transgressions of the whole community— that the goat takes with it over the edge of the cliff?”

The second concept used here to draw out the concepts around transformative justice is the idea of the City of Refuge (“Miklat Miklat” means “Refuge Refuge”), described in the Torah as a place where “people who had transgressed or been put out of their community of origin [could find] a place of refuge, absorption and integration.”

The idea of transformative justice is that the individuals involved are transformed, but so is the political and social world in which the transgression took place.  Transformative justice must spring from the community involved, and can’t be imposed from above.  It asks us to take seriously the humanity of offenders, their traumas, and the ways that their path through life has been directed by systems of oppression. 

There’s lots of interesting stories given to illustrate these ideas.  One is from ESPN.com (!!!).  It’s about NBA star Chris Paul, whose grandfather was beaten to death by a group of boys his age when he was a teenager.  The boys went on to grow up in prison, and Paul publicly forgave them and expressed his wish that they could be released.  It is a moving story, especially from such an unlikely source.

There is also an article about a woman who publicly forgave a group of teenagers who sexually assaulted her, and held a community celebration to show and enjoy the strength of her family, her community, and her own spirit.  To be honest, I have no idea how people forgive other people for stuff like that, so the articles on forgiveness both intrigued me and set my teeth on edge.

There’s also a really interesting article by someone who was accused of abuse by a partner, and made every effort to live up to the standards of accountability in which they fervently believed.  However, they found that they were instead ostracized from a community that paid lip service to the concepts of accountability and healing without having any way of putting them into action to make the community whole again. 

This writer’s point is that being accountable or enforcing accountability can only take you so far.  Communities also need to have practical models for making things OK again.  As this anonymous contributor points out, otherwise the effect is to marginalize people who are in many cases already marginalized:

 “They were trans people of color and white working class trans people, all of whom had no biological family to fall back on. We were far from perfect, but had done nothing resembling these accusations, and we had relied on that community for survival before being excommunicated.”

Another writer gives a totally awesome account of how she was supported by her community in extricating herself from a relationship with her violent husband, both at the moment she was in danger and over the longer term as she dealt with the fallout.  I think having this kind of story available is incredibly important.  Everybody wants to support someone who’s in a bad place, but actually knowing how and being able to follow through on it in a way that is sustained and effective is a whole other ball game.

As a bookish sort, I think the idea of supporting radical change by developing new metaphors is intriguing, though by no means a substitute for organizing and direct action.  Metaphors guide our reasoning and lend structure to our emotional impulses.   

We need metaphors with the explanatory power and emotional pull to stand up to the idea of the criminal justice system as the “thin blue line” standing between safety and mayhem, the notion of “an eye for an eye”,  the image a cop or a voter has of what a criminal looks like.  (That last one might be a synecdoche rather than a metaphor?)  In any case, thanks to Lewis Wallace and Micah Bazant for this unique and extremely thought-provoking zine.

- Lily Pepper

9:39 am  •  18 April 2012

This week I’m reviewing two zines collaboratively made by Lewis Wallace, Micah Bazant, and others.  Both are free to download and are totally awesome.

A Story of Attica

By Project NIA, with contributions by Mariame Kaba and Lewis Wallace.

Illustrated by Katy Groves and designed by Micah Bazant.

28 pg. at half-letter size

Free to download [direct link to PDF], paper copies $3 from Quimby’s

In a recent review, I wrote about the George Jackson Brigade, a radical direct action group in the 1970s motivated by the murder of imprisoned Black Panther activist George Jackson.  While the George Jackson Brigade may not be so widely known, this zine concerns another political consequence of Jackson’s murder that is much better known:  the uprising at Attica Correctional Facility.

The population at Attica, in upstate New York, was largely young, largely Black, and much, much larger than what the prison had been built for.  In 1970, Attica Liberation Front, a radical study group, helped give shape to the prison population’s anger and frustration with a list of demands to improve conditions in the prison. 

The Front gained support throughout the prison by joining the sports teams to have an opportunity to interact with prisoners in other blocks.  I was excited to learn this fact, as it is definitely the best and most intelligible reason I have heard for being involved in team sports. 

However, the issuance of their demands only provoked harsher treatment, compounding tensions in the prison, which were subsequently ignited by George Jackson’s murder.  After a series of non-violent protests, the prisoners took over Attica on September 9^th, 1971. 

On September 13^th, 43 people, guards and prisoners alike, were shot to death by the police and the National Guard, wresting control back from the prisoners.  While the uprising drew worldwide attention to prison conditions in America, it also provoked violent reprisals against the prisoners of Attica.

Valuably, this zine includes oral histories of prisoners who lived through the uprising and the subsequent reprisals.  Frank Smith’s detailed and unsparing account of being beaten and tortured by guards who accused him of being a leader in the uprising is very difficult to read, but it is the kind of thing that you should know about. 

I have an awesome friend named Kristin, who is very involved in activism and research around prison abolition.  She recently took a PR tour of Attica, and had the following interesting and profoundly horrifying story about it:

“A long-term correctional officer talked about a shift between the 80s and 90s in the kinds of prisoners entering Attica—a politicized and organized group of inmates was replaced by people with histories of crack addiction, who were quick to lash out against guards and other prisoners when faced with even ‘minor’ personal inconveniences, but weren’t very interested in collective political action.

The officer recounted an episode from 1981 in which thousands of prisoners at Attica showed solidarity with the 1971 riots by eating their meals together in total silence for several days, and he talked about how scary that was for him to witness.  He concluded that the rise of crack was one of the best things to have happened to the prison”.

As this zine points out, there are over three times as many Americans in prison in 2009 as in 1970.  The lessons of Attica are as relevant as ever to America and the world.  With this in mind, the zine also includes Information about current prison strikes and uprisings, and the conditions that provoked them.  This is much appreciated, cause I find it important to learn about radical history to have a sense of continuity and tradition, and equally, to understand that these struggles continue.

The zine also includes poetry by men who were imprisoned at Attica at the time of the uprising, an extensive list of resources, and expressive, angular illustrations by Katy Groves showing key moments and quotations from the uprising. 

All in all, the zine is a handy primer, which seems to be intended more for someone who is not especially familiar with the history of Attica.  That said, the materials it collects and the analysis it offers are interesting and thoughtful, so it would also be of interest if you’ve already done some reading about the ground covered. 

- Lily Pepper

10:00 am  •  17 April 2012  •  1 note