Feminist Zine Making

Why zines and why now?

During quarantine, zines (short for “magazine”) have become a medium to explore and express the thoughts that are swimming around in my head. Making these 8-pagers, in particular, brings me (Joshlyn) so much joy. just in the process of taking an ordinary piece of paper and making a medium for art, words, and information that I think is worth sharing.

The versatility of the zine is something that has drawn me to the form. Zines can contain anything: text, photographs, illustrations, infographics, collages. Something so small has the potential for multitudes. I’m still quite new to zine-making, but it has been a way for me to explore the interests I’ve always had but never felt I had the skill or authority to execute (thanks, imposter syndrome). Zine-making has taught me that being a novice shouldn’t stop me from trying to learn more and potentially share with those around me so we can learn together and from each other.

Self-published work likes zines are self-empowering, bringing people and their stories from the margins, and centering them. San Antonio-based zine St. Sucia describes it beautifully: “Zines are everyone’s novels and newspaper,” a magazine for the people, by the people. When you want to say something that might not be given a platform in a more traditional magazine or other mainstream publications because it might be “too radical” for being feminist, it is time to take pen to paper and self-publish!

Even if all you have is some printer paper and some markers, and something that you want to get out into the world, you’ve got the ingredients to get a zine cookin’!

Join me in making an
8-page zine!
“There are other zine-making tutorials out there, so thanks for watching this one!”
- Joshlyn Thomas
This video was made with the support of Edward Herrera

How are zines feminist?

It wasn’t just the riot grrl era that made zines a mainstay for feminist and queer art. Even with the internet, zines are still thriving as a media that can be accessed digitally and physically. There is a place for South Asian narratives in the zine scene, with publications like US-based Kajal and Burnt Roti from the UK at the forefront. With calls to submit, they curate essays, poetry, art, and so much more to showcase voices of the South Asian diaspora. Queer Zine Archive Project is based in Milwaukee, WI, and has expanded to become one of the largest exclusively queer archives internationally. The range of their collection spans different countries, languages, and queer identities. The archiving of queer creator’s content has proven to be vital to queer representation beyond what the mainstream offers.

At SAYHU, we occupy a unique position as South Asians doing feminist organizing in the Southern United States. Our values of anti-racism, anti-colorism, intersectionality, disability justice, reproductive justice, and so much more can be explored through this medium. With a rich history of feminist zines, our work has its place too. Our voices deserve to be heard.

How are zines accessible?

As mentioned before, the materials to make a zine can be as minimal as an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper and a writing utensil. BOOM! With a little bit of folding, you’ve got 8 pages to make magic with. Zines can be widely distributed physically through photocopying the original and folding more zines, as well as digitally. Many zines are published online and can be accessed as files that can be printed out and passed around.

Another plus to digital publication of zines is the ability to add image descriptions for illustration so that people who use screen readers can have images described if they are blind or type out handwritten text from your zine so that it can also be read by a screen reader. If you make a zine digitally, text that is typed can be detected by a screen reader. Access in zine-making is not just financial accessibility through inexpensive materials, but in making sure that the content can be useful to people with disabilities through assistive technology.

Zine Culture in Texas

Here in Texas, zine culture is alive and well. There are zine fests all over Texas. H-town has got its own, Zine Fest Houston, which is one of the largest in the country! There’s also zine fests in San Antonio, RGV, and Austin. If you’re looking for other zinesters in Texas, you’ll be in good company.

There are even collections of zines in university libraries, such as the Zine Fest Houston Records in the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections and Texas A&M Zine Collection, and Texas State University Libraries’ zine research guide, to name a few. While we are still staying safe at home with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, accessing zines through online collections can be a great way to learn more about the medium and why it is often used as a platform for marginalized voices to be heard. Sherwood Forrest Zine Library is another example of how grass-roots, volunteer-run collection can in-person and virtual, with PDFs available of social justice zines that can be printed and distributed in a physical format as well.