Zinester All Along

A person who makes zines is called a “zinester.” Zinesters come from every walk of life, every ethnicity, and all types of backgrounds. Some are recent earthlings (young people), others have been around awhile (wise elders). Anyone can become a zinester: there are zero pre-requisites, just a desire to become one and the willingness to sit down and create zines!

At first I felt sheepish about becoming a zinester. I’m 46 and couldn’t help but notice how many zinesters were so much younger than me. I kept thinking to myself, “These people are so beautiful and creative. They figured out how to do this at such a young age. How awesome!” Then, something amazing happened. While I was visiting my grandmother in San Antonio and going through her papers and photo albums, I came across a “family yearbook” I created with my cousin in 1986. As I flipped through this handmade, photocopied booklet, I realized that it was technically a zine! OMG! I could hardly contain my excitement when I realized that I have been a zinester since my teens. I started noticing additional artwork I created when I was a child and found more evidence that zines have been in my blood since the beginning. I feel as if I have discovered a long, lost part of myself.

Here’s the yearbook we created:

One of my earlier “zines” (it’s one page, so I’m not sure it’s technically a zine), was this piece I wrote about myself for a school project:

My guess is there are may more zinesters out there. Are you a zinester?