Zinesters: A New Kind of Historian

In her article Be a Zinester, Anne Elizabeth Moore writes: "Be aware when reading a history of zines that for every single sentence you read committed to paper by a devotee of some subject or another, a different sentence was uttered somewhere and never written down. It was more accurate than whatever you just read, and more beautiful, and spoke more directly to you and your experiences. You can think of it as lost, gone, and unavailable to history-or you can assume it is there, still, somewhere."

Wow. Talk about a great way to end an article. Not only does her statement speak to the importance of zines, but it speaks to the overall importance of being heard and exercising one's voice. Historians will never get it exactly right, because there will always be a certain bias or generalization or neglected segment of the population. Someone or something will always get left out. It's the unfortunate and inevitable nature of it all. But zines allow for those same people to be heard, opinions to be expressed, and subcultures to be defined, while maintaining a certain amount of accessibility and flexibility to the process.

If it's not through zines, I hope that people continue to find creative ways to be heard and to express themselves. As for me, I'm excited to continue learning more and more ways to get my own voice out there, whether it be through zines or other methods. In the meantime, I can't stop thinking about that single sentence, the one that may or may not be gone forever, and part of me can't help but think maybe, just maybe, the point of it all, the point of being a writer in the first place, is in small part to find those lost sentences, those lost voices, and make sure they are finally given that chance to be heard.

Be a zinester response

I like Moore's definition of the zine. She sets it up in a bigger sense than just talking about the lonely kid sitting in his basement cutting and pasting a zine of his together. She makes it sound like more of a movement that you're involved in, rather than a self-indulgent project.
I also like that she thinks of it as a sort of self-educating system where these creators can push the limits and try new things with the support of their following. They don't have to worry about traditional rules overstepping their urge to do something new and to take risks. I've never read a history of zines that included porn. I never really thought of it in that way.
I think the 90's zine genre is one of my favorites. I just read "Shit Magnet" (Jim Goad) for one of my other classes. He was also the creator of the trouble-making zine ANSWER me! He basically just chose the most obscene topics for his zine; anything that would piss people off. He even did an issue that satired rape which caused a huge hubbub and was even put on trial, in a sense. That area in time (connected with the whole grunge era in music) seemed to just really push harder and harder in the questioning of the mainstream, of the government. Any type of authority was glared at under everyone's individual microscope.
I might've just talked myself into an idea for my own zine.

be a zinester

It’s interesting to read Anne Elizabeth Moore’s article on zine’s and also think about the first article on zine’s we read and see all the different points both writers brought it. It’s almost like for each of them, zines history is completely unique and not something that is exactly the same for each person, like a war or a presidential election can be.
I think this has a lot to do with how Anne Elizabeth Moore feels about the history or zines and that it sort of doesn’t exist.
Zines to me have always seemed important because it was people keeping notes on what was going on, or a moment or a thought that makes that person who they are. We don’t have enough of that in this world. Too many of us ‘average’ people kind of just die and no one remembers much of anything from them- no one learns from them.
But to me, zines give us the ability to write history as we know it and not how it’s delivered to us in school.
So if we are the history keeper who’s keeping history on us? Maybe that can explain why the word zine isn’t in the dictionary, or why there really isn’t a solid history of it.
But I want to believe the reason why there is no historical document on zines is because all the zines created are the historical documents. Zinesters are keeping their own histories.

Be a Zinester

What intrigued me most about this piece was her emphasis throughout that the zine is special because it is the history that doesn't reach the history books. Those disenfranchised, marginalized and forgotten have found a place whether it is in the tijuana bibles or the code quilts of the underground railroad. I think zines are also a strong reminder of what we as individuals can do, what we can create; zines put the power of entertainment and information back in to our hands. This article actually reminded me of an interview that The Onion had with Michel Gondry right after the release of Be Kind Rewind. In the interview, Gondry expressed an excitement and anticipation for a world where people create their own entertainment, and spend less time searching for the perfect movie or song or book wrought by the many hands of corporate and get out there and make it for themselves. This is what zines are: a way for losers to write the history and the audience to make the entertainment.

Be A Zinester response

Firstly, who would've thought that picking up a small 10 page book put together with staples, tape, and a copying machine could have such an intricate and long history. And not only the history, who would've thought that these small books could have so much meaning and passion behind them. They are, as Elizabeth Moore agrees, a way for people to voice their unique opinions and desires that are not often discussed or written in large publications. Breaking away from the norm is, essentially, what zines are all about.


I am, of course, a little biased and proud of what zines did for female publications. The fact that females were finally able to actually use female names (what a concept) was a big step. And then beyond that... the fact that females were actually more prominent than males in the zine world was very surprising. It wasn't surprising to me that porn helped change the subject of zines to something beyond simply music, comics, and sci-fi because... well... what better way to grab peoples attention?

I liked Moore's idea about the possibility that the history of zines could be lost completely. There is so much we don't know because it was simply not written down. Way to leave us on edge...ugh.

Quimbys... Well, sorta

Because I missed the Quimby’s trip I decided to pull one of my favorite small press (Fantagraphics) books off the shelf: “Holy Moly” by Leah Hayes.
The outside cover is perfect bound, card stock and a bit of an irregular size. Both the front and back cover are printed with a hand drawn version of an old-school composition book. The inside form follows with each page lined in blue. The drawings all look to be done in ball-point ink pen and wonderfully imperfect. You feel upon the first page like you’ve been drawn in to someone’s sketchbook world, that you’ve stumbled upon something fragile and fantastic that was never ever meant for your eyes.
As you flip each page of this sketchbook you almost feel a story unfold. You watch young and smiling, rummy-eyed dancers and lovers spill and move across the page. You see their words but you’ve missed the entire meaning. You’re left with phrases like: “...a tripple-hanky tear-jerker!” “This has become a trouble” “There is something to youth, afterall” “Here is a taste of your own medicine” and “oh fer god’s sake what are you talking about?” These one-liners fill almost every page, and every dreamy, jerky dancer on Leah Hayes’ stage is guilty of uttering them, even down to the snails and the sea lions, but it feels more like a bad dub. We know it’s not a narwhal or a butterfly or Siamese twins talking but someone else trying to twist original thought in to platitudes, recreating the words over and over to make them more palatable but the bitterness lingers and the heartache pervades. All the while hope creeps in.

A list of my favorite quotes from this book:
and now we are on... cloud 9
there is sum hope (just kidding!)
“asslicious”
whadda buncha bologna

Also, here is Leah Hayes’ website for those interested:
http://www.leahhayes.com/main.htm

"Be A Zinester" Response

I like how Anne Elizabeth Moore began "Be A Zinester" by connecting zines to the timeless issue of being in control of your own voice. This is one of the most exciting aspects of zines and is probably over-looked by people who can't find any value in them.
It really surprised me that in the early fanzine scene the ratio between men and women was generally equal. Moore equates their position outside of academia and the "traditional, masculine world of professional publishing" with their democratic nature, as it allowed women, and other silenced and/or marginalized groups, the freedom to express their own voices. Her elaboration of Riot Grrrl zines illustrates the importance of this ability, as the work of Nomy Lamm that she mentions is definitely still taboo today. Although she does not explain the details of the mainstream press distorting the Riot Grrrl message, nor the ensuing media blackout, it says a lot about the power of independent publishing for these zines to have garnered so much attention (despite it being, most likely, negative/anti-feminist backlash) from the mainstream media.
It is also surprising that most dictionaries do not contain the word "zine," and how greatly they are misunderstood in mainstream culture. They do not define zines, as the real history is the zines themselves, Moore relays to us at the close of her article. The importance of this being that the struggle for an authentic, independent voice is not a thing of the past, as even the rebellious writers of Riot Grrrl zines, after the scene ended, were placed into boxes, as Moore puts it, by mainstream media misinformation/revisionism. Moore's call to the reader to explore, analyze and construct a history of zines for her/himself seems to be rooted in a nostalgia for zine ethos, and seems to present a daunting challenge to those of us coming after this time period to revive this age of truly democratic expression--that we should be zinesters.

(Again, to those who see no value in this kind of stuff...weak. "Don't be so lame" is what I would say. "You just don't get it.")

-Richard