Paper Zines

For this project, I interviewed 19 people in six states, ages 13-96. Excerpts from these interviews appear alongside the text of the Declaration, often with visual cues that suggest one possible layer of meaning. Sometimes interview quotations are in conversation with each other. Sometimes they stand alone. Sometimes they are rooted in history. Sometimes they are situated in experience and personal memory. Sometimes they fit the scholarly consensus, sometimes not. Quotations are variously touching, hopeful, heartbreaking, angry, disappointed, concerned, wistful, thoughtful, adamant, wavering, tentative. But they all give meaning to the Declaration of Independence, for both their speakers and for their readers. 

This zine is the beginning of my answer to a question: What would it look like for women themselves—known and unknown, living and dead—to reclaim women’s magazines from the clutches of corporations? How can women seize on the tropes of this form to represent their own history, struggle, and potential? The zine positions extraordinary and ordinary American women throughout history on the covers of women’s magazines in honor of Women’s History Month. The zine reminds us that ours is a long fight with a deep and rich history. The language and markers of the fight change, but the struggle continues.

My kids now recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school, just I did as a child. Like me, they’ve never once asked what the point of it is. It’s just a thing that you do. Like putting on sunscreen or brushing your teeth or doing your homework.  But what if it wasn’t? What if we contemplated what the words meant, assessed how we wanted to say them, whether we wanted to say them? Or better yet, what if we invented a new civic ritual altogether? One that speaks to who we are as a country, what we can be, how we can get there? This zine is a space to begin to think about these questions. For this project, I collected thoughts from 25 people in nine states, ages 12-96. Some of these thoughts are displayed in the zine, along with illustrations and historical artifacts.