Although I love Alvarez's novels, I found her book of essays to be a little meh. In fact, I stopped just before the halfway point. It might be zines' fault. I've read a lot of similar themed essays (about feeling half in one world and half in another, due to immigrant status, mixed race identity or the loss of one's native language) in dozens (hundreds?) of zines.
I'm reviewing Bad Mexican because I loved it, but my review might make you sad because the zine is no longer available. It's instant karma, though, because I'm bummed that Daniela's first zine, Soy Secretron is not in my greedy clutches.
It's funny how even though it's only from 2010, the zine feels old and old school. Daniela signs each copy, and mine at least has a little happy face illustration and handwritten annotations. There's a table of contents and a song recommended for each section. Daniela refers to her work as a "mini zine," but clearly it's a lot more substantial than she gives it credit for being. If you know Daniela, who is driven and ridiculously accomplished, it won't surprise you that her standards for her own work are absurdly high.
About that, funny story -- my Native American ancestors were enslaved by the white missionaries there and changed my family's name, so that's why my last name is Capistrano.
If a zine girl is going to write a memoir, I'm going to read it. Sheila does a better job than most at making the leap to the big spine. I don't have any complaints as far as that goes, like I often do. The editing and production are good. The only thing that bothered me at all is that I'm pretty sure I recognize one of the background characters, whose identity is concealed only by a very minor name change.
Somehow Elaine's annual zine got buried in my ever-expanding to-read pile, and I only just rediscovered it. Elaine is a school librarian now in school to become a school administrator--probably a vice principal. She discusses her personal politics that might make it hard for her to get a job as the head of a school, namely that she finds certain state statutes (regarding political indoctrination, e.g., de-facto mandatory pledging of allegiance to the flag) problematic to enforce. That passage reminded me of Ms. Finney from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit. Remember her?
An Irish woman in her mid-twenties spends a year (and a bit) working at an Orlando hotel and taking in the local attractions. She's a huge space program fan, and her description of the Kennedy Space Center made me want to visit. Her love of Disney isn't quite as compelling, to me, anyway. It's cute, though.
I loved reading DeWoskin's two novels, and I also love memoirs, especially about being caught between two cultures, so I was jazzed to finally get around to Foreign Babes. Usually that's a set up for disappointment, but although I didn't find FB quite as dramatic as her fiction, I still read it with great interest.
"The one good thing about being shut in a coal-hole is that it prompts reflection." So yeah, Jeanette Winterson had a rough childhood, but somehow managed to keep her optimism and sense of humor. Why Be Happy reminds me of Are You My Mother?, but without comics and run through a Joan Didion filter.
So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language -- and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers -- a language powerful enough to say how it is.
The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior -- benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'
'The what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.
'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course -- as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of the unconsciousness.'
It's been a year and a half since my last love-letter to Katie's zine making. The poignant 17 Strangers came to me in a donation of 100+ zines, but would have stood out, even among 1,000. The seventeen anecdotes read like flash fiction, those short short stories that take your breath away with a jab or a caress.
Twenty five Muslim women, most of them pretty observant, many of them converts, share their love stories. To a heathen like me the mystery of these women's lives isn't Islam; it's their devotion to it. Maybe I was expecting some secular Muslim contributions, but that was probably dumb. Anyway, the women's tales are heartfelt and straightforward. Surprises include the two chapters written by lesbians and the matter-of-fact and reasonable sounding appeal of polygyny.
I've long been a List fan, but I don't think I've ever gotten around to reviewing it before. Ramsey's perzine is in the form of lists: her own, found, and contributed. In #13, subtitled "Moving On," she applies her oblique storytelling to her break-up with her long-term boyfriend. The lists reveal her vulnerability, and that she is lonely but not beaten, also committed to veganism and straightedge, but not preachy about it. The lists aren't the full story, with a talented artist like Ramsey. There are lots of full-page drawings to illustrate the various lists.
