Month: April 2019

A Guide to Soap Operas
Amber is Blue
AmberIsBlue.com
https://amberisblue.wixsite.com/amberisblue/shop

A Guide to Soap Operas is a small square black and white text mini about Amber’s love of soap operas, why soap operas are special, iconic soap opera couples and plot lines, and more.

I picked this zine up because I was pleasantly surprised to see a zine on this topic. There’s so often negativity attached to the shows and watching them – something Amber addresses.

They open by writing about how having bad childhood asthma led to many days spend at home – with time to watch soap operas.

Amber had me hooked and enjoying so much nostalgia whey they mentioned the first soap they watched was Days of Our Lives. Haha. Hope and Bo! But’sit’s not all about the nostalgia – as pleasant as that is. Amber also touches on the other cool aspects of soap operas.

I’d never really thought about the longevity of these shows or about the actors in them, but it is pretty amazing. Amber mentions the abundance of strong female characters – one in particular who has been on one soap opera longer than Amber has been alive!

If you like/d soap operas and would like a smile, this is a zine for you.

Barren: On Infertility and Creation
Avery Flinders
http://chickencollective.storenvy.com/

Barren is an A6, handwritten black and white zine about infertility, gardening, and the mysteries of growing life.

I knew I would get a lot from reading this zine, but I didn’t expect to be so immediately and completely focused on the writing that I didn’t want to stop reading even just to write review notes.

Avery writes about the impact of suddenly finding out they are infertile and the subsequent attempts at fertility treatment. They share their feelings of sadness and shame, of envy of their friends’ pregnancy news, and around the IVF process. They also examine some of the language used around fertility – how it’s so often called a journey while Avery relates more to the metaphor of being stuck in place.

There is so much in this zine that grabs my heart. So very much. Avery has found words to express their feeling around infertility that have helped me so much in processing my own. I had many ‘I feel the same’ moments while reading this zine. I appreciated the nuance of the topic and the ways Avery found strength as well as the moments of knowing that some things are up to the mysterious lottery of the universe.

This is obviously a zine on a very specific topic – a topic that effects my life and, by extension, my feelings. But you of someone you know is dealing with infertility, I can speak firsthand that this zine could be a comfort because it was and is to me.