Size Queen
Aug. 2nd, 2005 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susanstinsonThe new zine came today, it's exquisite. There is such a feeling of courage and tenderness about it, from the beautiful, glossy paper and visual excitement to the amazingly dense, varied and -- what? -- full content, there's so much to this zine, so much in it, it's a gorgeous, rare and precious thing.
I'm about to order four more copies. Money is tight around here, but gifts like this don't come along everyday, and I've been watering the tomato plants that my lover gave me for my porch every day because I want those ripe tomatoes falling off into my hands. Same principle applies here. Plus, I keep thinking of people who I need to have read it so I can talk to them about it.
I haven't read the whole zine yet -- no way I could have! So much abundance! -- but here are a few of the things I already love:
There's more. A lot more. Max Airborne and Cherry Midnight, the editors, have done an amazing job. The zine was so moving to me that I spent all day writing about Judy Freespirit, a fat activist I've long admired, instead of writing about my puritans, which is the long and winding road of the novel at hand. I love my puritans and I'll be back to them, and deeply, tomorrow, and I love having the fat girls and the puritans both singing their sacred verses inside my head (inside this whole culture's head, says me, telling secrets.)
The cover promises "art, smut, comix, politics, community, trading cards," and it's all really there.
If you haven't already ordered Size Queen, you should, right here.
I'm about to order four more copies. Money is tight around here, but gifts like this don't come along everyday, and I've been watering the tomato plants that my lover gave me for my porch every day because I want those ripe tomatoes falling off into my hands. Same principle applies here. Plus, I keep thinking of people who I need to have read it so I can talk to them about it.
I haven't read the whole zine yet -- no way I could have! So much abundance! -- but here are a few of the things I already love:
- the fat girl as ocean, hills, water, and sky, fat girl as queen, fat girl in a glorious garment, fat girl with a deliciously distressed frame, fat girl with a face full of calm happiness and history on the cover. Because of the fabulous Size Queen trading cards, I know that this is Jukie Sunshine, whom I recognize from her recent appearance in the Fat Bottom Revue and the photographs by Leonard Nimoy. So much art bursting out all over in her vicinity!
- the Size Queen trading cards are quite a fine set!
- There is a beautiful review of my book Venus of Chalk by Christine Ianieri. Among a bunch of other things, she says:
And in case you need to hear it explicitly, this is a book about being fat, about loving and hating fat, about living in a fat body and a fat soul, loving fat women, carrying around a fat Venus with a hole in her belly.
She got the thing about Venus with the hole in her belly! She got it! - On the facing page is a stunning photo by Tina Arroyo of a fat woman in a corset with birds of prey (and all) tattooed on her back
- And, oh, oh, oh. They used "Movement, " a poem of mine. And, you know, this means so much to me, I almost can't talk about it. The design of the poem, the way it's laid out, oh, it's so beautiful. It's like another poem, a visual poem on the page, floating over and under and inside of the text. This is a poem that I wrote during a fat conference, one that had been difficult for me, and the speaker in the poem goes down to a river, and there are great stylized waves on the page, which are the river and the poem rides them like any one person might ride the pulses of a long political struggle, might ride a movement, and there is this totally dense and thrilling illustration -- oh, it's brilliant -- a drawing of a merbeing, with a spiky crown of a haircut and proud belly and a perfect tail waving a shouting pirate flag -- this is magic and real and beyond the best thing I might have dreamed of to swim up alongside my poem.
The artist is Olivia Edith, who I learned from her bio at the link has recently moved to NYC and is "committed to rocking the boat one little paint brush stroke at a time."
She's rocked mine, for sure. - Then, oh, again, oh, on the very next page is the opening of "Fat Farm," a wrenching and amazing comic by Max Airborne, about "memories of having been locked up in a mental hospital for a year and a half, when I was a teenager (age 13-15)." I'd seen this before online, and think it's wrenching and strange and strong and unforgettable, with the single most powerful use of Tab (god, the **clink** of the quarter dropping into the slot of the pop machine just haunts me) that I've seen. It's so good that one of the copies I'm buying for a friend is on the strength of this strip alone.
-
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charlottecooper's harrowing account of having been censored by the feminist publishers who had solicited her to write a book about the fat rights movement is another article that's worth the price of admission right there. I'm so glad that we have her book, Fat and Proud, and it breaks my heart that she had to go through all that she did for it to reach print.
There is a book just aching to be written about the women in print movement, its enormous gifts and brutal failures, both.
There's more. A lot more. Max Airborne and Cherry Midnight, the editors, have done an amazing job. The zine was so moving to me that I spent all day writing about Judy Freespirit, a fat activist I've long admired, instead of writing about my puritans, which is the long and winding road of the novel at hand. I love my puritans and I'll be back to them, and deeply, tomorrow, and I love having the fat girls and the puritans both singing their sacred verses inside my head (inside this whole culture's head, says me, telling secrets.)
The cover promises "art, smut, comix, politics, community, trading cards," and it's all really there.
If you haven't already ordered Size Queen, you should, right here.
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Date: 2005-08-03 12:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 12:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 12:42 am (UTC)hmm, maybe I should actually go check my mail! ;)
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Date: 2005-08-03 12:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-08-03 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-08-03 06:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 07:42 am (UTC)Later...
Date: 2005-08-03 12:34 pm (UTC)Re: Later...
Date: 2005-08-03 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 06:32 pm (UTC)I just saw your comment on my lj post about big burlesque and clicked to read more of your journal. I would like to read it all the time - I hope it's ok if I add you to my friends list!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-16 12:14 pm (UTC)