Page 7 - Rabbits Road: Light Reads for Heavy Days NEW

leila kassir
I’ve been reading zines for over 30 years, am an occasional zine maker, and in 2009 founded a zine collection in the London College of Communication Library where I was working at the time. Zines, and other DIY self-made publications, have always provided me with moments of recognition, community and connection. I love the varied voices expressed via zines, their directness and subjectivity. I also love the very existence of zines, their conscious rejection of mainstream publishing...and that everybody, genuinely, can make them.
The phrase “quietly radical” in many ways describes what most draws me to zines, including these five. Although the content of my chosen zines is varied, they all explore ways of finding and making your own space, sometimes within potentially alienating environments, and doing this in a quiet way. Whether it is creating a world around a band that exists beyond the cynical bounds of the mainstream music press or challenging the dominance of middle-class voices and experiences within academia, these zines are concerned with making heartfelt connections. So much power exists in daily, seemingly small acts of resistance, in refusing narratives that make no sense and rewriting them. All bar one of my selections were written during 2018-2019 which was a deliberate choice; I have been reading zines since I was a teenager and am now decidedly middle-aged but I still love reading them. Zines still show me the power of that rewriting, and of keeping on keeping on.