Short Summary
Hi my name is Noemi and I'm a poet and creative from South Texas. My borderlands tongue story begins centuries ago in Puerto Rico and Mexico and more recently, how my parents met in Chicago.
My dad came to the US as a bracero and was used for his labor. My mom and her family were displaced from Puerto Rico when she was very young. After living in Chicago we moved to South Texas where the idea of being split biculturally and triculturally was even more pronounced.
I came to zines when I was about 20 and wrote my first zine "Making of a Chicana." Influenced by young punk women of color at the time who were making zines, 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.
This zine anthology includes the work I have done since then, beginning with "Making of a Chicana" in 2001, the first issue of hermana resist from 2002 as well as other one offs and mini zines I did.
-Including in this anthology:
Hermana, Resist 1-5
-Aged Noise
-Making of a Chicana
-Lines from Acedia to Apatheia
-The blue metal kettle
What's inside this 8x10" collection:
200 + pages filled with zines I've written in the last two decades. The cover is a beautiful design by visual artist and educator Celeste De Luna. Celeste De Luna is from the Rio Grande Valley and known for her relief prints, creative printing making and community work. Her site >> http://www.celestedeluna.com/
The Funding
- The funding of this project will go directly to pay printing costs and other associated fees for a first print run. It will also go towards promotional materials and shipping fees.
- Anything above this amount will go towards travel fees and tabling.
The Impact
Documenting our existence and history is vital and so many queer crip women and nonbinary zinesters and writers work is lost because it is not archived.
The reality is that many presses don't want to take on a zine anthology project because of the cost and size. Many also believe that since zines are a dying lo-fi product, zine anthologies won't sell and won't have traction. Another reality is that collections by women of color and nonbinary zinesters of color just do not get produced. Documenting the existence of our work from decades past is vital to portraying a part of history that we were part of, and a testament that this medium of communication was important for us latinx, grrls, punks, and others trying to find our voice, and each other.
The importance of zines and edu.punk in my formative years, coming into conocimiento, as we say, means so much to me that I often cite then when giving readings and in writing.
Many zines of decades ago vanish without being preserved. The flats are lost or their makers are no longer with us. I strongly believe, and have advocated for ever, that it's necessary to preserve our work both because it's culturally significant and because we are often missing from zine history and history itself. Writing and producing zines is one way of documenting our existence and writing our own history, but so is preserving these written histories.
Challenges
There are challenges with this getting accepted at traditional indie presses. This is a large collection and comes in at about 200 pages, and after having shopped it around to different presses set a goal to get this printed and ready in 2018.
Other Ways You Can Help
Some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean you can't help:
- Share my campaign with peer, friends and colleagues.
- Get in touch with me if your institution can host a reading, zine fair, zine presentation and host me!
The perks
I've created some cool perks for those that donate. These include:
- a perk where I come visit your school or class and talk zines!
- a copy of my book Love Letters: South Texas Experience and this anthology.
- Copies of all my zines still have copies up (Will update with the titles!) and this anthology.
- and more!
Gracias!
Your donations and contributions mean the world to me. Your continued support for all my projects truly make me feel valued :)
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[from the zine aged noise]
Questions & About Me
If you have any questions about the book, feel free to email me at hermanaresistpress@gmail.com
Hope you will donate to the campaign!
Noemi Martinez is a queer crip femme poet-curanderx, mixed media artist and writer with magical roots from Mexico and Puerto Rico. A single mami of 2, she lives in a multi-crip fam in deep South Texas. She created a small micropress Hermanx Resist Press in 2014 and edits the online space Poems & Numbers which produces #nof!ckingborderwall, a litmag.
Some of her poems, essays and art can be found in Rest for Resistance, Bitch, TAYO Literary Magazine, Jellyfish Review, Alyss Lit Mag, The Deaf Poets Society, Hip Mama Zine, The Perch, Rigourous, Make/Shift and Motherhood: Love on the Front Lines. She spills secrets and poems, late night twitter style @hermanaresist.
