Truckface
By LB
Issues #12, 14, and 15,
$3 each from Ms. Valerie Park Distro
Truckface collects evocative and sympathetic tales of author LB’s life as a student teacher of English in Chicago’s public high school system.
Truckface comes in thick, chunky little quarter-size instalments. These little bruisers pack a punch: LB’s writing is smart and funny, and it evinces great empathy and a huge commitment to living out one’s values.
LB explains in an interview that they started writing Truckface in high school, continued writing other zines, and then started Truckface back up in 2005. Each issue takes a year to complete and is compiled in the summers when LB isn’t teaching. Because Truckface is amazing, I wish there were more of it, but the time taken to put each issue together very much shows. The zine is thoughtful and cohesive, dense with reflection and insight.
The zines are also pleasant to read, with screenprinted covers and clear type. They are illustrated only with the author’s illustrations, which are fun and evocative. It feels like damning with faint praise to say “I really like how this zine is legible”, but man, you sure can’t take that for granted with zines.
Issue 12, Summer 2008
80 pages at ¼ letter size.
$3 from Ms. Valerie Park Distro
Issue 12 finds LB feeling stuck between beleaguered teachers and troubled students, as well as between adventures with friends and trying to make it as a mainstream adult. For any of you trying to fit into a non-punk workplace while maintaining your sense of self and your political and personal commitments, this one’s for you.
LB writes scathingly about the casual racism and general lack of sympathy for students among some of the other teachers. Warned as a student teacher to avoid spending time in the staff room “as if hardened hearts were an easily contractible disease”, LB wants to do a good job and get a permanent position, but wants no part of the teachers’ culture of resentment.
Conversely, LB shares some of what the students are going through. For a writing assignment, the students interview someone who immigrated to the United States. Many of them, bravely, share their own experiences or those of family members who endured incredible trials and suffering to come into the States (and some who died trying).
In this issue, LB also recounts a trip to New York to re-connect with old friends and non-work life. Also included is the story of a summer trip to Croatia and Poland, garnering still more tales of resiliency from a friend’s relatives who lived through the Second World War.
Issue 14
80 pages at ¼ letter size.
$3 from Ms. Valerie Park Distro
Issue 14 begins with LB cutting loose on summer vacation, drunk in Warsaw yellin’ about fjords. However, mostly it looks back on LB’s second year teaching. Topics covered include selecting clothes for work— which is really hard for anyone who has to dress respectably for work despite strong and long-standing personal habits to the contrary— and harder, for someone who identifies as genderqueer and doesn’t work in an environment where words like “genderqueer” trip regularly off people’s tongues.
In this issue, LB also writes about teaching Maus, Art Spiegelman’s comic book story of the Holocaust, about starting a band, and about working at a Girls Rock Camp.
Issue 15
88 pages at ¼ letter size.
$3 from Ms. Valerie Park Distro
In Issue 15, LB has been teaching for three years and confronts a mysterious curse apparently well familiar to other teachers, in which every second year of teaching is awful. While skeptical of this pseudo-astrological explanation, Issue 15 finds LB confronting standardized testing, Rahm Emanuel, gang signs carved into desks, walking pneumonia, and exploding homebrew. However, in the cursed year three, LB also manages to make some pretty great connections with students, which are very charmingly illustrated by comics and examples of student work and notes.
In the interview I mentioned above, LB also mentions that owing to the difficulty of keeping past issues of Truckface in print, plans may be in the works to publish a book collecting the zine’s back issues. It made me really happy to hear this, and I certainly hope it goes ahead. It’s always a mixed blessing to discover an amazing and long-running zine where only the most recent couple of issues are in print.
Truckface is a zine that came highly recommended, and did not disappoint. It is one to read and re-read. It fits nicely in a pocket; I recommend it for riding the bus to or from a rough day of work. LB’s writing is sharp, thoughtful, and full of empathy; it’ll make you want to live to fight another day.
- Lily Pepper
