Zine, Anna Vo (editor), Issue 6, [email protected], www.annaxvo.tumblr.com, $4.50
Portland’s Anna Vo is the definition of multi-hypenate: they are one of those amazing human beings who boasts the ability to juggle tons of important projects that are always executed wonderfully (and on time, which is an attribute that will forever elude me.) They are a brilliant comic artist, make delicately ruminative folk music, play in doom metal and screamo bands, and write fiction! They are also an activist and speaker who runs workshops about race, culture and empowerment and they’ve been making an incredibly (I suspect) labor-intensive and thoughtful zine for POC punks called Fix My Head for a number of years now.
The zines run a standard size of 8 x 11, they’re black and white and there’s tons of stuff packed in each issue. #6 focuses on QTPOC punk artists and features an illustration by Karissa Sakumoto on its front cover of a piggy police cop getting his eye gouged out by a punk. That kinda sets the tone for the zine’s contents — there is not an iota of bullshit in the many interviews (all conducted by Vo) which read like a who’s who of rad POC creators, including artist Sarah Rosenblatt, zinemaker Nia King (We Are Not White Lesbians) zinemaker Rosi Vo (Not Straight Not White Not Male) and fashion designer punk Ari Perezdiez. I especially loved Vo’s interview with the utterly uncompromising Oakland, CA punk band SBSM and the fold-out poster art titled “Unlearning History Series” by Cecilia Kavara Verran, which features a “map” of a nude mixed-race punk woman etched with the cartographical scars of colonization and control. Breathtaking.
My only quibble is that parts of the zine are a little faded, especially around the creator bios, which sucks because I wanna know more about all of them! Other than that minor detail, this zine is gorgeous and self-aware and funny, but it’s also balanced with a tone of authority, insistence and community, with not a shred of the pedantry and lecturing that sometimes comes from publications by and for punx. Read and feed your mind. Order copies at fixmyhead.storenvy.com. (Alison Lang)