- 2Shares
I met Noemi over ten years ago through our shared love of zines. Those self-published, personal manifestos served as a witness to our lives, and continue as a source of expression in a world that doesn’t hold space for marginalized people.
Almost two decades after publishing her first zine, Noemi Martinez is putting together the Hermana Resist Zine Anthology; it’s a collection of all her zines to date. She says, “I wanted to document my experience as a young brown crip mother in a little place called the Rio Grande Valley as I dealt with being a single parent, poverty, working/working poor, chronically ill, depression/anxiety and all the feelings in between.”
To fund the printing and distributing costs, she started an Indiegogo. I interviewed Noemi to learn more about her process of putting together this anthology, and to help bring awareness to the campaign.
What was it like going back to read and reflect on your zines?
Noemi: I’d been thinking about collecting my zines for an anthology for years and have been asked by others to make this happen. A few of my zines have been used in classes and I thought that having them all in one place would be a smart move. I also asked advice from other zinesters who have put out anthologies how they dealt with some of the issues that come up from reading your zines from decades ago.
What has been the most challenging aspect of putting together your work?
I wasn’t always right. Some of my ideologies have changed and some of my forms of thinking have evolved. But it’s been almost 20 years for some of these pieces, so it’s natural for a person to grow and evolve. Finding some of my zines and good enough copies since I couldn’t find the original flats to use was also tricky. Reading some of what I wrote about was painful, like looking looking under scars to see how they formed.
What can someone expect when reading your zines for the first time?
What I wrote in my zines has been called proof that love is political; how loving in the times of poverty, mental illness, illness, and discrimination is still possible. And how this form of activism that I took part in was rooted in revolutionary love. My words won’t be comfortable and this isn’t light reading. It’ll be honest and I wrote from a place of intense emotions. But what I learned from others as I was making these zines is that they were important to share – because others were experiencing similar struggles and despair but also hope (that’s why we did zines, really), attempting to reclaim spaces and define our own identities.
What do you hope people take away from reading the anthology?
How we can be resilient and survive. That writing zines and writing about our lives is a form of resistance. And sometimes, for crip writers and dreamers, this is the only form of political activism that we can do.
Why was it important for you to put this anthology together?
Since I started writing zines, I’ve said that zine making is documenting our existence. Telling our own stories and writing our own histories. Many zines don’t get preserved, and even less are zine anthologies published of queer people of color or mamas of color. I’d like to see more collections of zines written by single mamas of color and women of color from decades ago preserved like this. Our writing and work are often missing in zine and punk history as well as the riot grrrl movement. We critiqued racism, patriarchy, sexism, stereotypes, homophobia and rape/abuse culture. Our lo-fi method of communications was circulated through zines and other alternative forms of media-diy-ing festivals, shows, tours in ways that focused on issues we wanted. I want these histories documented and preserved and I hope that others will anthologize their zines, utilizing the diy and self-publishing skills we learned in zine-making.
You can support the Hermana Resist Zine Anthology on Indiegogo.
