The idea to publish Hello Barkada's first zine came to mind after interviewing cartoonists Lawrence Lindell and Breena Nuñez for HelloBarkada.org in September 2021. They shared the origin story of Laneha House, their indie zine press they operate from their home, and how zine-making is a way they give themselves permission to affirm their range as artists, to offer what is absent in the dominant media, and to heal.

"This is my self care," said Lawrence.

Having published over 20 zines since that conversation, I don't just appreciate what Lawrence said—I know what they mean.

FIGURING IT OUT

I produced the first issue of Isang Mahal, Hello Barkada's now annual compilation zine (aka compzine), from October through December 2021, with the aim to release it by the end of that year. I wanted to provide another platform through which to share the comics contributed that year by Maxi Rodriguez, Angel Trazo, Tatum Begay, and eventually Breena, one that was physical yet manageable and cost effective to make without the need of additional vendors.

As with the starting of Hello Barkada, learning how to make a zine came by looking it up, asking, and doing. I looked up online articles, diagrams, videos. I DM'd cartoonist and zinester Sharon Lee De La Cruz for advice on the type of paper to consider for the zine's internal pages, which set me an online search to understand what "24lb paper" meant. I bought a long arm stapler. I learned new terms like "saddle-stitching" while wrapping my head around what it means to digitally lay out a zine that is 5.5" wide x 8.5" tall with 16 internal pages. After trials and errors on repeat, some tears, and a fair amount of chastising paper feeds, I released Isang Mahal issue no. 1 on January 5, 2022—only missing my goal by a week. 

It was grounding to hold the final version of the zine for the first time. 

The first handful of copies sold online through the Hello Barkada online store hosted on Ko-Fi (currently dormant), followed by in-person sales at my first-ever tabling event—San Diego Zine Fest 2022. The fest was hosted completely outdoors, to allow for as much fresh air as possible since free access to the first COVID vaccines were just reaching the wider population. While I didn't contract COVID that day, I still should have worn a mask. 

Since San Diego Zine Fest 2022, the number of zines Hello Barkada offers at tabling and community events has slowly grown, and with it a complementary catalog of tings, all to raise funds to continue to commission artists and writers, to produce future issues of Isang Mahal, for the ability to offer free, pop-up community events and artful activities around San Diego, and for mutual aid actions across Turtle Island, to Palestine, and around the world.

WHY ZINES

The first time I DIY published was when I was around 9 or 10. It was the late 1980s, before desktop computers became the norm in households. With pencil, pen, crayons, marker, and printer paper, I created family newsletters to hand out to lolas, lolos, titas, titos, and cousins at our big Filipino family parties. The newsletters were 1–2 pages long so that my mom could sneak-print copies at work, and they typically featured upcoming birthdays of family members, a word search, kid jokes, some blurb or listicle about kids’ pop culture, and editorial credits to uplift cousins who contributed to the issue.

Learning how to make zines 30 years later has reconnected me with those feelings of play, capability, and agency rooted in collective care. Much like starting Hello Barkada was a way for me to regroup after decades of feeling suppressed, subjugated, and isolated in corporate and arts nonprofit spaces, taking on a zine-making practice has helped me relocate my creativity and skills towards centering, serving, and existing among intersectional marginalized communities of color. I am unbound from supremacist and classist notions that stories "must" be published in a certain way, "must" follow a certain style and process, and "must" come from a capitalist-condoned publisher to have value. 

From this liberation, I tap into a long-standing revolutionary tradition of self publishing that includes Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and their Harlem Renaissance comrades who produced the single issue Little Magazine FIRE!! in 1926. I am open to discover the indie newspaper-style zine Inside Eastside first published by Chicanx teens in 1967, during the lead up to the East L.A. High School Walkouts of March 1–8, 1968. I am connected to the audacity of the Beat Poets, whose first chapbooks were reproduced by mimeograph. I am aligned with the visceral vulnerability and humanity that is punk and Osa Atoe and her zine Shotgun Seamstress. I immerse myself in a San Diego zine community cultivated by such folx as Dora Gina Mejia of San Diego Zine Fest and Nick and Amanda Bernal of Burn All Books. I connect with and stay inspired by fellow zinesters including Marley of Purest Revolution, Flor of Cempazuchitl's Library, Luis Blackaller of Cartoon Distortion, Circe Cota of Toronjazul, Stacey Uy of Radical History Club, Julie and Oumou of Zines4Queers, and more.

Zines are radical because of their accessibility. They're low cost to make and reproduce, can cover any topic, can be distributed anywhere. Anyone interested in making a zine needs no one else's permission to make one, nor a laptop, printer, or stapler: To make an 8-page mini zine, one only needs a sheet of paper, a borrowed writing instrument (a Sharpie is sweetest, but pencil, pen, marker, crayon, or colored pencil will do), and some idea, emotion, resource, or piece of knowledge to share.

Put another way: Making a zine helps us practice being our own validators, in which we can preserve and share ideas, resources, perspectives, and experiences relevant to us and our communities, and in a way that does not require the blessing or permission of corporatized, privatized, and establishment entities. Zines enable us to resist erasure by becoming the tellers of our own narrative and contributors to the telling of a wider, interconnected collective story. When communities in the margins make zines, we move from being passive subjects of the mainstream's reporting to active narrators of our shared history. We cultivate belonging.

MADE BY HELLO BARKADA

Zines made by Hello Barkada range from literary zines like Isang Mahal, to perzines like On Making Rice, Dear Calamansi, and Hella Connected, to poetry zines like Maybe This Time: Poems for Gaza and This is for the Zinesters, to fanzines like Graphic Novels That Stay With Me and In the Shuffle: Songs for a Rough Day, and more. They also vary in size dimensions—an intentional practice to remind folx that zines are also spaces of play, experimentation, and abundance. 

Not all Hello Barkada zines are available for purchase. Select zines are offered for free as a practice in gift culture, and some are offered up for trading only (in the past, accepted trades included zines, artwork, stickers, and proof of contributing to a mutual aid appeal). 

To find out when and where Hello Barkada will table next, follow Hello Barkada on Instagram and subscribe to the Hello Barkada e-newsletter. If you're a zine distributor and interested in carrying Hello Barkada zines, please reach out at contact[at]hellobarkada.org.

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