Enby Life: Stories, poetry, & art by non-binary people
Sally King, Wolfram, Madi, Keira Huolohan, Luca, Nicki Warren, Rae White, AlexB, Nikki Nicnevin, Doc, Izzie Austin
Editing & Design: Rae White
https://raewhite.net

Enby Life is a half-fold black and white zine collection of stories, poetry, and art by non-binary people.

When I first pick up a zine, I don’t just read it. I flip through, get a feel for the paper and binding, so on and so forth. Well, I didn’t last too long flipping through this zine before I stopped flipping and got to the reading part.

Enby Life teaches you about more than what non-binary is but what it feels like. The pieces touch on things like labelling, frustrations, confusion, acceptance, and more through comics, poetry, writing, and all the variety you could want in a zine. I love the art and comics, but I equally love being made to slow down by longer prose pieces.

Every piece in here made me stop and think.

On the aesthetic side of things, there’s a lot to love about this zine. The type is huge, so there is absolutely no worry about eye strain here. Even the smaller type is easily a point or two bigger than I’m used to seeing (no, I did not look weird comparing font sizes in various zines), and it’s all in a nice sans serif font.

Even more, the comics, art, photography found inside are all well done and can keep you flipping back and forth between the pages even after you’ve finished reading the zine.

I greatly appreciated the glossary of terms in the back of the zine. It’s like a little nod of acceptance that not everyone is 100% knowledgeable about these things right from the get go and even lists links for where to learn more. When a zine (or any media) comes from a place of teaching rather than expectation, open minds find it easier to learn.

I really enjoyed this zine. It’s a lot of fun, and I think it’s good for people to either find that they aren’t so alone and/or to learn about what life is like from other perspectives. Grab a copy.

PS. This definitely needs to be a series if you’re up for it, Rae.

My Mad Fat Zine
Seleena Daye & Holly Casio
seleenalaverndaye.co.uk
coolschmool.com

My Mad Fat Zine is a black and white half-fold love ode to the UK television show ‘My Mad Fat Diary’.

Seleena and Holly have very possibly made the longest, most well thought out fanzine I have ever read. From episode synopses to set designs and musings on ‘where are they now’, this zine really gives you everything you could want to know about this show.

With so many topics in the show like mental health, fat girl sex, family, friendship, 90s nostalgia and more, they certainly had a lot to write about. But they always kept it within the context of the show and how they felt about the topics’ representation within it. I enjoyed reading about how they deconstructed what could have been otherwise dismissed.

With synopses and character arcs discussed, I wondered if that level of detail might spoil the show for me, but I actually feel like I could watch it in a more thoughtful way now. Even knowing where a lot of things are going, there’s still a lot to be discovered and enjoyed.

I appreciated that Seleena and Holly also included their criticisms of the show. This isn’t blind adoration here. They comment on some rather significant plot holes and even write about imagined episodes in ‘the lost year’ between seasons two and three.

Along that same line, I liked reading about how both Seleena and Holly dismissed the show before falling in love with it. Something about that little detail made me laugh and made their fan-feels a bit more authentic to me.

My Mad Fat Zine references a lot of things I’m not familiar with and is about a show I’ve never seen. But I think a mark of a great fanzine is winning over people like me, and this zine has definitely done that.

Insomniughhh 2
Ashley
https://sites.google.com/view/insomniugh

Insomniughhh 2 is a black and white quarter-sized zine about life with a circadian rhythm sleep disorder.

I reviewed Insomniughhh 1 not long ago and was very curious to see where it went from there. Where the first zine walked more of an educational zine path, issue two dives into perzine territory.

Ashley writes about the heartbreaking isolation and troubles that can come with being someone who has a different clock to the 9-5 that is meant to be ‘normal’. There’s no holding back on topics like faking normal, the quest to find medications that actually work (and continue to work), and more.

I sympathised a lot with Ashley’s ‘graveyard of pills’ having had one of my own for my own conditions up until the point I moved a few months ago. That being said, I do think a ‘Things I’ve Bought While on Ambien’ is in order if Ashley ever feels up to it.

There is a little more margin watching that needs to happen for this zine with an entire line of one page cut off the bottom. But once again, Ashley pairs text and graphics an what I think is a balanced way.

While the two zines do differ, I feel like they’re a good pair that readers would do well to pick up together. In the first, you will find more info, but the second will give you a better glimpse of the reality.

Confessions
?
notyourleo@outlook.com

Confessions is a quarter-sized zine about beauty standards and growing up Filipino with a desire to be white.

Confessions gets right into things with no introduction as such nor table of contents. While I must admit this did throw me at first, the subject matter pulled me right in just as quickly.

The zinemaker writes about growing up with girls who were ‘obsessed with getting their skin paler’ and how it was actually difficult to find cosmetic products that didn’t have bleachers in them. The pressure to be white didn’t only come from peers, however, with the zinemaker’s own grandmother chiming in.

They go on to write about how in the rare instances that Filipinos are in the spotlight, they are often pale with perfected looks.

To put it bluntly, this zine made me sad. But it did so in an important way. I grew up with girls complaining about wanting to be darker – a story so similar to this zine but with the opposite colours involved.

That’s why these stories are so important to share as many perspectives as possible and maybe just come to new, better conclusions.

There are bright notes to be found with the author writing “i honestly think im beautiful” at one point. In a zine that touches on the pressure not only from media but from friends and family to be something else, I found that especially beautiful.

In regards to the contact details, I actually have the zinemaker’s name written down, but at no point in the zine is a name mentioned. I don’t know if thought was actually put into the choice – and I may be reaching with this – but it serves the subject. It gives this zine a feeling of being one story in many – highlighting the problem itself.

Confessions ends nearly as abruptly as it begins, but writing things that way is growing on me. It’s as if someone has dropped a box containing a life experience in front of me and simply said, “deal with it” instead of wrapping it up with pretty beginning and ending ribbons.