Zines: Absent Cause, Issues 2, 3 & 4

Absent Cause #2: Duality

AC issue two is about bipolar identities, including bisexual and transgendered identities, split selves & multiple personalities, & the usual unapologetic mixing of culturally "incompatible" elements that you can expect from Absent Cause. What happens when you mix sexuality and death, man and woman, one culture with another? Redguard is making a bomb, and I think he wants us to throw it. Amanda Palmer headlines with a lengthy interview. Again, awesome journalism that spans a wide range of topics and will keep you reading.

Includes interviews with:
* Walaa Quisay, Egyptian student activist
* Laura-Marie Taylor, Functionally Ill zine
* Breaking To Top, Maoist punk band from China

Half size/Color

$4.00

Absent Cause #3: Death, Dying, Undeath

Redguard's newest edition of Absent Cause is the biggest yet- in fact, it features an additional Literary Supplement of fiction and poetry. Treading from the heartwrenching to the delicate to the gothic, Absent Cause 4 covers the subjects of death and life (or undeath, as you may prefer to call it?)

On the undeath side, there is a great interview with Pussy Power artist Sara Dodd about her humorous, outlandish pussy-powered feminist art happenings. And there are some beautiful pieces from people struggling with serious illnesses, including a piece by Leslie Feinberg and activist Eman Rimawi. "I am only a girl," an incredible poem by Walaa Quisay dedicated to the women and girls raped and killed by US soldiers worldwide, gives a somber dimension to this collection of pieces about death. A very thoughtfully put together package that felt was by turns grounded, serious and fun.Includes a 60-page Literary Supplement.

130 p. including both zine and supplement/half size/Color

$3.00

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Absent Cause #4: Survival

“Survival,” Issue #4 of Absent Cause, is full of personal narratives, poems and visual art that is at once haunting, thought-provoking and inspiring. The ‘zine’s contributors are all survivors--of racist imperialism, of violent patriarchal relationships, of childhood abuse compounded by economic hardship or a combination of all of these tragedies. To read their accounts is to be a witness to their healing--an intimate and redemptive experience. Mixed in with stories of pain are triumphant accounts of survivors taking their power back, such as Victoria Law’s essay on the 18th-century “regulars” who gave wife-beating men a taste of their own brutality. The editor’s own survival experience makes him a sensitive curator. This is powerful stuff and highly recommended.

This I affirm: I can live with the hole where my father's love should be, where by father's love has never been, without trying to stuff the hole up with something (someone) else or pretending that it doesn't exist. I can let the hole be empty as long as it needs to be, until some wind blows through it, making it into a flute, whistling out a song to call me back to myself..."

--River Willow Fagan, "Letting Go of My Imaginary Boyfriend's Actual Hand," Absent Cause 4, p. 70.

Warning: This zine contains potentially triggering pieces about domestic and social violence, childhood and adult sexual abuse, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders, substance abuse, and dealing with abuse perpetrators.

83 p./half size/Color and B&W