* manifesto *
This Asian American Zine Fest was started in the fall of 2024 by Asian American zine makers hungry for a political art space for our community. Zines are meant to be shared—an exchange of information. In the U.S., the first zines were Black political thought coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. With the emergence of fanzines and art zines, we urge the zine community to remember the importance of radical zines. Zines, as independent publishing, challenge capitalism and white supremacy through the democratization of knowledge.
We use Asian American to describe a politic, as originally intended by the Asian American Movement of the sixties and seventies. It’s not about what you are, but what you believe. Up until that point, Asian communities were largely separate and often at odds, competing for proximity to whiteness. Our community ancestors created Asian America as a commitment to pan-ethnic solidarity. In belonging to one another, activists claimed and wielded power against oppressive structures, crucially through the Anti-War and Black Power Movements. This belonging was firmly rooted in anti-imperialism, as Asians stateside saw themselves in the Vietnamese struggle for liberation from U.S. military occupation, and felt the institutionalized bloodlust for bodies like ours.
When we were ignored and rejected by mainstream media, Asian Americans became the press and defined our own identity. We built momentum through self-publishing, sharing news, resources, and political thought. Newsletters such as Gidra: the Monthly Asian American Experience spread anti-war principles and linked our experiences with colonized people around the world. Phoenix Rising: the Asian Pacifica Sisters Newsletter was hugely formative for the AAPI lesbian community. Asians are most helpful to white supremacy and imperialism when we remain silent and complacent. Therefore a persistent and collective voice is one of our most powerful and important tools—we can disrupt unjust traditions, end cycles of trauma, and generate new futures.
When we start to shed the “American Dream” narrative many of our families carry, we begin to understand how imperialism, specifically U.S. imperialism in our homelands, transforms us into racialized beings who feed racial capitalism. If we probe our histories further, we can see that underneath the model minority myth, revolutionary Asian Americans have always been a thorn in the side of the American empire. Experiences with both colonialism in the motherland and racism within the belly of the beast have dually sharped Asian American politics. This resonates across different lines of Asian revolutionary lineage, as detailed by scholars such as Seema Sohi, who writes in Echoes of Mutiny, “[Indian American] politicization was a consequence of the racial violence, exclusion, and surveillance they were subjected to in North America. Ultimately, anti-Asian racism and political repression in North America fueled their anticolonial politics as much as the injustices of British rule in India.”
It is important to note that the U.S. empire is not unharmed by our struggle against it. Much of the U.S. security state and legal personhood was born out of fear of Asian Americans. We lean on the revolutionary legacy of community ancestors who came before us, and the foundational work of Black and Indigenous grassroots movements. We recognize U.S. imperialism as the common enemy of the people. From the hundreds of U.S. military bases worldwide to the policing of communities of color on Turtle Island, we reject the U.S.’s legitimacy as a moral agent. We reject the co-optation of Asian Americans for white supremacist projects. We refuse to be tools of the United States’ imperialism. As Asian Americans, cross-racial solidarity is part and parcel to our politic; therefore it is no surprise when we say Free Palestine, Black Lives Matter, and Free Them All.
Our Asian American Zine Fest aims to uplift artists who resonate with this message. While not everything presented reads as anti-colonial on the surface, we believe that the artists’ politic informs their creation. A zine about pickling watermelon rinds, in the hands of the right person, can be a road map towards liberation. We challenge “art for art’s sake” by using our cultural knowledge and motifs to redefine Asian America towards liberation for all. Zines represent the voice of the people in the press—uncensored by companies and executives, we can create new narratives of what it means to be Asian American. We decide for ourselves who we are: not celebrities, not our city council, and certainly not our presidents. We encourage generous and critical readings. This is an invitation for you, dear reader, to make and engage with the world of Asian American zines. Our audience is each other and we need your voice too.
* asian american * native hawaiian * pacific islander *
In our manifesto we called this event an Asian American zine fest. We did this because our current planning team are all Asian American. We wanted to be transparent about our identities as the current organizers. We know that Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders are often lumped in with Asian Americans in a way that’s disrespectful and performative. We know that the legal grouping of Asian Americans with Pacific Islanders came in the 1980s, when we were put together as a category by the U.S. census bureau, and as a result this grouping came from outside our communities. We do not want Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander folks to be tokens.
That being said, we welcome Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander folks to come to this planning meeting and talk about what they would want out of a zine fest. While the experiences of our communities are quite different, we are connected by the impact of American imperialism in our homelands. U.S. military bases pollute our waters and endanger our communities. We want this zine fest to be in solidarity with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander folks– and if people are interested in coming in and planning with us, it’s very welcome. The current planning team wants to provide a space for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander folks to engage with zines, and we want to listen to what you have to say in order to make that happen. We are more than willing to change the name from “Asian American” zine fest.
We welcome anyone who identifies as Asian (including West Asians, South Asians, Mixed Asians, and Adoptees), Native Hawaiian, or a Pacific Islander (including people from the Mariana Islands, Aotearoa, Micronesia, Fiji, Polynesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Samoa, Guam, and Wallis and Futuna).
