Author: Nyx

The Stay at Home Girlfriend #24
Kendy P.
https://www.instagram.com/missmuffcake/

The Stay at Home Girlfriend #24 is a half-fold black and white perzine about zines, mental illness, recipes, cat fun, and more.

Kendy opens this issue of The Stay at Home Girlfriend with a piece about mental illness difficulties – the physical repercussions, how comorbid conditions can make each other worse, and the value of group therapy. Dealing with OCD, anxiety, and depression, there is a lot to identify with in Kendy’s experiences. There is a ray of sunshine in everything, though, with Kendy continuing to keep working on things and viewing it all as a journey.

Following that comes the variety of things I have come to love in this zine series. ‘Things I Like’ gives a fun peek into Kendy’s world with plenty of things to check out if you’re in Berkeley. Kendy then goes on to reflect on fears about the Trump presidency, tabling at EBABZ (East Bay Area Book and Zine Fest), and the loss of the amazing zinester Ara Jo.

I loved reading about Kendy’s zine goals as well as goals for the year to come (2017 for this issue). Lists are a forever favourite. While I’m not vegan, I’m always curious about the recipes Kendy shares (of which there are plenty). Even her cats get involved in this issue with some humours pieces: ‘Dr Mady Explains the Ancient Art of Blood Letting’ and ‘Mortis’ Natural Home Remedies for Hair Balls’.

The Stay at Home Girlfriend series always feels like a letter from the friend who always sent at least five pages of all sorts of things going on in their lives. It’s a zine that doesn’t push or pull – rather saying “Here I am – readers alwaus welcome”.

I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone, so I’ll say that I quite like what I’ve read of the series and always want to know what happened next in Kendy’s life.

How to Sleep
Neik Glasshouse
http://nuonis.com/anatomic-air-press/

How to Sleep is slightly smaller than A6 and is a black and white zine full of tips to help you to get to sleep and stay asleep.

“With this guide, I go deeper into the beauty of sleep and how you can use it to grow.”

When I first saw this zine, I thought it might be about something else with a clever title. Lo and behold, a title that gets right to the point. Haha.

How to Sleep opens with a table of contents and an introduction to the zine. Neik writes about the reasons for writing this zine and their respect for the state of sleeping. The reader is meant to take this zine and the contents within as they will as it’s more personal than scientific.

The zine is split into two sections: ‘What You Need’ and ‘Steps on How to Sleep’. Part one is shourt at three pages, but it brings up important reminders for the place you spend about a third of your day. Not all of the suggestions are doable (mostly from a money-related view), but that’s what you get with many guides.

I found part two interesting with more than a few things I’m going to try in an effort to improve my sleep. It’s a more ‘internal’ vibes and energy answer to the more ‘external’ environmental approach in part one. I like that Neik explores before, during, and after sleep rather than only how to get to sleep. Neik even talks about cultivating an internal alarm, which is something I always thought was a funny trick some people could do.

There was one small bit that rankled me enough to make me pause. In a section about reflecting on reasons to feel gratitude, Neik includes a footnote:

“If you prefer to be an asshole and do not want to strive to be a human being that exerts good vibrations, then being grateful might be a very hard thing for you to do.”

I found this to be aggressive for a zine that opened with a more relaxed and open tone. It also ignores that actually feeling gratitude can be something that does have to be worked on and that mental illness that can make it difficult to feel gratitude. These things to not make someone into an asshole.

Aesthetically, this zine is quite lovely. Vellum provides an ‘outer’ cover and is used in the middle of the zine for an introduction to sleep stages. The layout is great with a small font size but still a nicely readable sans serif font. (Save for a section at the very end that is especially tiny. Done on purpose, according to the author, but to what end, I’m not entirely clear.)

While I do have my niggles with this zine, I think it has interesting suggestions for getting more out of your sleep. If you’re looking for a more meditative approach to your sleep, then give this zine a read.

The 24-Hour Zine
Latibule
https://www.instagram.com/latibule_art/

The 24-Hour Zine is an A6 full-colour zine full of collages and writing based on suggestions made by other people.

Full disclosure: Latibule and I livestreamed together on Instagram during part of the making of this zine, and the idea of taking suggestions from people came from me.

The 24-Hour Zine opens with an explanation of the challenge (a 24-page zine made in 24-hours) and how Latibule created most pages base on prompts from her Instagram followers. I feel weird mentioning how much I like this idea given the circumstances, but I really do and would love to both do it more myself and see it done more by others.

With prompts like ‘sunflowers’ and ‘utopia’, this zine is full of colour. As a primarily collage zine of this style, I would expect it to be in colour, but I’ll still say that printing it in black and white would have taken something away from it. How Latibule interprets the prompts – especially prompts with less obvious colour associations – makes the zine all the more interesting.

Save for the middle spread, each page has its own prompt. Most of the prompts are from others – each idea credited to the person’s Instagram handle. However, some pages are Latibule’s own. With people coming up with unrelated prompts in the mix, quite a few different emotions are expressed in paper, washi tape, drawings, and sometimes words.

I’ve been enjoying flipping through this zine again and again. There is something relaxing about taking in all the elements of the various collages.

If this sounds like something you’d like to check out, then definitely pick a copy up and get lost in its pages.

Masculinities
Cindy Crabb (Editor/Interviewer)
http://www.dorisdorisdoris.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Crabb

Masculinities is an about 18cm X 21.5cm black and white zine about what it means to be a man and shaking up meanings within masculinity as expressed through a series of seven interviews.

Masculinities opens with an introduction from Cindy who explains that they didn’t know what to expect from the interview process. They’d seen a world where they shook up what it meant to be feminine and brought to light a lot of things that were wrong. They wanted to do the same for masculinity – and Masculinities emerged.

From there we dive into the interviews, the first between Cindy and Shane Parish. Shane talks about masculinity, manhood, how both those things were tied up on violence, and more. From there we go on to read a series of interviews that had a variety of subject matter and perspectives that I didn’t expect. Classism, masculine expectations and the impact that has on body image, masculinity and disability, abuse, sexuality, gender identity, learning to be a nurturing father… There is a lot to explore, and this zine feels like a great place to start.

Masculinities stands out aesthetically due to its non-traditional size. The drawing you may come to expect from Cindy’s Doris zines is present but I’d say not quite as much as the Doris series. There’s something entirely pleasing but mysterious about the cover. It is a bit of a fragile zine because of its size and a thin paper cover, but it did weather a house move well.

The interview ‘A Different Kind of Strength’ between Cindy and Brontez really stood out to me as Brontez’s story is one of growing up gay in a small 1960s town but is also so much more. The dynamic of a matriarch head of house was such a fascinating dynamic, and I found myself surprised at the positive masculine interactions Brontez experienced.

Even for its 28 pages, there is a lot to think about and process in this zine. The actual interviews are relatively short and get right to the heart of the stories, and yet I found myself taking the interviews slowly to make sure I was understanding – as much as I could – what each person was saying.

Masculinities has a lot to offer with different perspectives, things to consider, and maybe even things to question in the reader’s own life – all within personal stories told in these interviews. I will be reading this one again.