My new favorite zinester: Merrydeath

I've been shopping at the local punk junk store (Happy Birthday Mike Leslie, where I also put a couple of handmade things up for sale), and I'm in love with the zine selection. (A bit of background: I didn't grow up in a city, so even after living in one for five years, I'm still getting used to the neat things a city has to offer, like access to underground punk stores and zines.)


I bought both issues of Mine: An Anthology of Women's Choices by Merrydeath Stern. Basically, both issues are collections of abortion stories. They are all pro-choice, but they all present abortion in a different light. Some women were relieved at the experience, some women were torn up emotionally (maybe not so much from the abortion but from the way they were treated), and some women were a combination of both.



Issue #1 had a lot of stories about medical abortion, and a surprising amount of stories about women who had successful abortions without going to clinics (through herbs or performed by midwives). I hadn't really looked into the herbal aspect before I picked up this zine, so afterwards I did my own research (on the internet, so it's a little sketchy) about emmenagogues and other herbs.



Issue #2 was different because Merrydeath tried to get more stories from women of color. The contributors for the first issue were apparently white, and they had better access to abortion services (even if the services were sub-par), so the author tried to get stories from poor women. I noticed that many women had heard about herbal abortions, but they didn't know any definite information. The main issues were illegal abortions and the lack of information on methods to try other than medical abortions (which are costly, and therefore inaccessible to the same people who can't afford birth control).

Both issues were only $2.00, and if you can't find them at your local zine shop, you can buy them online.

I really enjoyed both issues. First of all, they were put together really nicely, with Merrydeath providing a lot of the artwork and the layout (and she also talks about her own abortion in the first issue). Secondly, one thing most of the women had in common was that even though they had friends supporting them through the abortion, they didn't really have many women they could talk to about their own abortion experiences. I always hear about the debate between pro- and anti-choicers, but I never actually get to hear from the women themselves who have to go through this, so it was a refreshing perspective.

These weren't just stories about abortion. The women mostly told elaborate stories about their lives and events that were going on at the time of their pregnancies. The abortions themselves only lasted about 15 minutes, even though that was the main focus of each story.

Teenage Single Mom

Awesome graphic novel that I just finished

Even though right now I don't have much in the way of disposable income, and I am usually pretty frugal, I went to the local comic book store the other day and bought The Amazing "True" Story of a Teenage Single Mom. It was an interesting find, and even though it was $16.00, I decided to treat myself to an hour of entertainment.

I'm going to try not to give away the whole plot, because it is honestly a book everyone should read (and I could even see reading it to kids, although some of the scenes are a little graphic), so here goes: It's a first person perspective of one woman's life as a young mother. She faces not only adversity from being a woman, but also from having made a "mistake" by having sex at a young age. Because as someone told her while she was pregnant, "But someone said I made my bed, so I should lie in it." (Not only her figurative bed, but the bed she is implied to have laid in before her pregnancy.) After her baby, she laid in her bed and dreamed about her future.

She struggles through menial jobs to scrape out a living, and she ends up leaving her situation with a guy who turns out to be abusive. Then it is revealed that she has been around abusive people her whole life, from her mother (who didn't want anything to do with her and let her sister raise her), to her sister's husband (who almost raped her), to her baby's father (a random man who raped her after her sister kicked her out for fighting back against her husband).

But in the end, it's a story of hope (or else she wouldn't have been able to write this book), and it has a happy ending. I haven't given away the whole plot, mind you, because there are a lot of details and events that happen in her life. Also, the graphic novel is worth reading because the pictures are very interesting (the rapists and abusers in her life slowly turn from normal looking people into monsters). Whenever I read stories like these (see A Child Called "It" too), I always think it's so amazing that these people were able to overcome such hardships and tragedies to become the people that they are today.

The book at least one issue familiar to feminists: women who have babies (especially young mothers) and are unmarried are very publicly judged and people just assume that these "sluts" just got what they deserved. Of course, having a baby before marriage is wrong, because it fouls the property that only the husband can rightfully claim on his wedding night. (After marriage, babies turn from "mistakes" into "blessings".)

I'm a bit brain dead from my work schedule to offer much more than this short review, but this book is definitely worth a read, and I'll be keeping it around in my library and probably lending it out to friends.