#2

LOVE LETTERS TO MONSTERS #2
Ciara Xyerra on WMZ

I bought this zine solely because of the story of abortion, and because it advertised hand coloured covers (I love zines with extra love!). What I found between the covers were judgemental assumptions, fellow zinester bashing, and not enough to impress me after labelling zine culture a “medium of mediocrity,” which is hilarious considering this woman, after years of making zines, doesn’t even take the time to give her zine proper leading (line spacing) which is really hard for the eyes to follow, which makes it difficult to read at times. She also puts down Jessica Valenti’s books, blogger over at Feministing.com, calling her books “strictly elementary feminist re-treads”, complaining zine culture has nothing really more to offer this self-proclaimed “big fish in a small pond.”
Just because she is familiar with what she has to say, doesn’t mean that other people who don’t know as much about feminism can’t benefit from it. In fact, Jessica Valenti’s books were some of the first feminist books I picked up, and I can wholeheartedly say that they are a great introduction to anyone interested in knowing more about (especially third wave) feminism. Following are insults toward other zinesters and their zines, which I found completely unnecessary.
The only part that I found interesting to read was her experience with abortion, which by the way, would’ve been a lot better if she didn’t split it into three parts and randomly place them separately throughout the zine. I did however appreciate her having the courage to come out about her experience with her abortion - I feel it is important to touch on these subjects, and it was very informative and well written for the most part.
If she does make any more zines, I definitely wouldn’t buy them. I’d read it if a friend gave/lent it to me, or if I got it in the mail somehow. For someone who advocates for change in the world, she sure seems like she is full of a lot of hate.

AUBADE #4 : Virginia Stories
aubadezine at gmail.com

I re-read this zine and may have loved it more this time than the first. Between a two-colour cardstock cover are stories of childhood nostalgia revolving around Virginia. There are some typos, but it is clearly written with a typewriter, which cancels it out as a bad thing. I think typos created via a typewriter gives it a very human and relative feeling, especially in this zine, as you can tell the writer is very skilled in the way he/she strings her words together into sentences. She’s no amateur! Very well put together, this is the kind of zine I’d go out of my way to share with someone else.

BREAD CRUMBS (retracing the map to where I’d been)
Julie Mannell
writers_cramp_390 at hotmail.com

Although I write a lot of poetry myself, I don’t normally like the poetry of others. I don’t know what it is, I think I write poetry for myself because I feel I need to, not because I’m really into poetry as a whole. But Julie, a local I know from high school, has this zine called Bread Crumbs that I picked up at Gender Radical, a fundraiser for Women’s Place that took place a year or two ago, after making a donation. That night, she also did a poetry reading from the zine, and I found myself inspired and surprised that, alas! I actually enjoyed the poetry of another. The layout and everything about it is really simple and easy to follow, the content loud and clear. lovelovelove it.