Zinemaking, “Doris”, and the Heart of DIY: In Conversation with Cindy Crabb
Cindy Crabb
Asheville, North Carolina has a very special place in my heart for a great many reasons, but the most important being that it’s the place I first discovered and fell in love with Cindy Crabb’s zine “Doris”. Upon cracking open the first issue I stumbled across, I was taken by how heartfelt, vulnerable, and unapologetically sincere Cindy’s writing was. As someone who’s always felt a little too sensitive for a seemingly cold and isolated world, “Doris” was proof that my empathy and desire for community were not in vain. It showed me that it’s alright, maybe even better, to embrace life with my heart on my sleeve. When I sat down with Cindy for this interview, it was like talking to a wiser, more compassionate version of myself, a version that I someday hope to be. Whether you’re interested in starting your own zine, have been a lifelong fan of “Doris”, or just want to learn a thing or two about the world, I hope this interview is as impactful for you as it was for me.
What inspired you to start a zine?
Cindy: I started the zine back in ‘92 or something like that*; zines were still pretty new. I had maybe only read a little handful of them, they were just something you’d find passed around from friend to friend or in weird places. I had been involved in political organizing in my late teens and early twenties, so I had been doing more political newsletter and magazine writing. What I really loved about zines was that they really opened up a space that I hadn’t seen opened up before. They were a space where people could intertwine their personal and political experiences and things didn’t have to be formulated and answered yet. There was space for us to talk about the questions we were struggling with. That’s what inspired me, and that I wanted to be a writer and everything that was getting published was by white dudes. I didn’t see how people got published if they weren’t rich people going to fancy dinner parties in New York or something. It was also just a fun thing to do!
Why the name “Doris”?
C: I don’t really have a good story for that [laughs]. It was just really random, I never thought I would keep doing the zine so I’d just drawn a little picture and was like “What do I name this little person on the cover of this first issue?”
Do you have a particular issue of “Doris” or an essay that you’re most proud of?
C: That’s a good question…there’s a few stories that I like the most. I wrote a mini one-off zine called “Multiplicities”, which was about Dissociative Identity Disorder, like having a fractured psyche and how that manifests. It was super personal and I didn’t know if I’d ever publish it as myself. I just made a little mini zine and didn’t put my name on it and just kinda had it around, but then I ended up putting it in my second “Doris” anthology book so it’s in there. Another one I wrote, I think it was Doris 16, was about friendship; I really love the pieces I’ve done about friendship and its importance and how hard it can be to prioritize friendship over romantic love. I think the thing I’m most proud of, as something that impacted society, was the work I did on consent and helping communities talk about consent in a broader way than how it sometimes gets discussed.
How did you feel when writing such deeply personal and vulnerable essays? Did you ever think “Hm maybe this is something I want to keep to myself” or did you think “This is work that needs to be done and people need to hear this”?
C: Some of both. I feel like part of what is wrong with our society is that there are so many secrets people are forced to keep. I think that if I could use the privilege I have to be able to speak of some of the traumas I’ve been through in a way that enabled other people to also speak of theirs, then that was an important political act I could take. There were a lot of things that I was terrified to write about and I also didn’t want to trauma-dump in my writing; it was a balance of how to be vulnerable and also write about things in a way that was beautiful, accessible, and impactful to other people, hopefully without retraumatizing them too much. I think doing it in that way, where I was writing about it without over-editing it but also not just writing with no editing, helped me with my own trauma in a prolonged exposure kind of way. I would write it out and be like “Well, what is it that I’m really trying to say here? What is the crux of this? How can I compile something that has a story that’s traumatic and painful next to a story about beautiful things and connection and survival, next to a story about something funny?” I wanted to evoke all of the emotions within a little zine so they’re not always meant to be read alone.
Did you find trying to put your story, thoughts, and emotions onto the page draining at all? Or was it a relief?
C: I’d say both. I know people now do stuff more digitally - I’m excited that people are returning a little more to print though - but the whole tactile experience of typing the stories up, cutting them with scissors, gluing them, and drawing pictures about it helped me get some distance from it in a way that was different than how I could do in my mind or just with my words. There was a way that the stories got turned into a different kind of art through that very tactile experience of creation.
Are there any themes that you would’ve wanted to explore in more depth or that you would want to touch on if you were to do “Doris” now?
C: Hm…that’s an interesting question. I don’t know, I feel like I kinda tapped out all the things that I had to talk about. I wrote it for maybe twenty years or more; I started it when I was 22 and stopped when I was 49 or so. I honestly can’t think of anything!
If you had to start “Doris” now, post-pandemic in 2022, with all of the experiences that you’ve had since you ended it, what would you do differently?
C: I don’t think I would do anything differently. I think I would try to do the same thing I had done then, except I don’t know if I had a world or a life that supports that. I’ve been thinking about this a lot because sometimes I’m like “Oh, maybe I should write this again”. Someone recently asked me about zine fairs and how to start one, but I was never interested in zine fairs and I don’t know. When I started it [“Doris”] in that first decade, the whole point was broadening what people talked about within my geographical community. At the very beginning it was just about doing it for the sake of it and I just passed it out to people on buses and stuff but very quickly I started giving it to people who I knew or was in contact with through going to shows or being at mutual events. A lot of the people I knew who started writing zines at the time had a similar motivation; we were trying to inspire each other, open up different kinds of conversations, be vulnerable, get to know each other better, and expose each other to different thoughts and ideas. That’s still what I think is important. I think face-to-face conversations and connections and geographical community is missing a lot in this modern time. If I were to do it now, I think I’d be really focused on where and why the subcultures and communities that I’m a part of are fracturing and falling apart, how we support each other or request support that we’re not getting, and why it isn’t there. With the way the world is going, one of the only things we have power over in the long run is how our geographical communities are going to survive the shitstorm to come - that is already here. How can we build more cohesive, connective communities? I think art, writing, and vulnerability is one pathway toward that that’s both fun and restorative.
Cindy again! (Screenshot taken from a video interview, see footnotes)
You mentioned subcultures and communities, could you elaborate on which particular ones you’re involved in or identify with?
C: Currently, not a ton! I moved to Pittsburgh and the pandemic started. I was peripherally part of an older, anarchistic artist collective, but it fell apart. I also have a weirdo, queer therapist subculture I suppose! In the past, I was part of a punk, feminist, queer/genderqueer community and I’m still part of that, but not practically a ton.
There seems to be a common misconception that punk is strictly a youth movement and that most people age out of it, can you speak a little bit about your experiences with that?
C: I mean, I was in punk bands until my mid-forties or something. I love punk! I can’t stay up as late [laughs]. When I was younger we’d be like “Why aren’t we more inclusive? We’re alienating the older people!” But now that I’m older I’m like “Oh, no, we just can’t stay up after 10, we gotta go to bed!” I just set up a Generator show the other day out in this abandoned tennis court and our friends Shellshag played and they just turned 50, too. We’re all still punkin’ it up, old people style together. I honestly don’t understand the whole “people age out of punk” because almost everybody I knew when I was really active in the weird, queer, artist punk world is still doing weird shit. Everybody’s doing weird, creative stuff and they’re all still punks, they just might not go to punk shows as much. They’re leading forward movement in drug harm reduction availability policy, reproductive justice organizations, or being abortion providers, nurses, and social workers. Everybody’s still doing cool stuff: playing music, raising crazy children, and making weird theater. I really haven’t seen people get more conservative except for the people who weren’t very radical to begin with.
What inspired you to write your book, Masculinities?
C: I had done a zine called “Filling the Void”, where I interviewed punks who had quit drinking, so I liked that format. I’ve always been passionate about dismantling the patriarchy and I grew up in a time when there was more gender essentialism. There were more cis-women-only group meetings and zero visibility about trans existence, although me and my friends were always trying to find histories of trans existence and searching for something other than the gender binary. A lot of people I knew and was around were sort of anti-men, not in a man-hating lesbian stereotype way, but just shittalking about dudes a lot. I was always like “I love my male friends and I love the problematic male people in my family and I want them to heal.” And in order for me to have a safe life, they need to heal too. In order for all of us to move forward as a society, we need to care about everybody. Around the time I did Masculinities, trans visibility and the trans movement started becoming more accessible to people. I knew a lot of people who’d started or were considering transitioning. I’ve always been someone who identified as a woman and was misgendered all the time; when I was little, people always called me “boy” even though I always wanted to be called a girl without having to grow my hair long. I walked this space of ambiguous gender, so when I became more of a punk and weirdo, I wanted to push what people can see as gender bigger. I want to be in-your-face with my gender presentation. Gender’s always been an interesting topic, and then people talk about masculinity sometimes as if it’s a specific thing. They’ll say “Oh, you know, men are like this.” And I’m like “No, they’re not, they’re all kinds of ways!” I wanted to explode what we mean when we say “masculinity”, like what did people learn about masculinity growing up, what was positive and what was negative about it, and how did they learn to grow within or against that?
What do you mean when you say that you want to be “in your face” with your gender presentation?
C: I’m tall, have really broad shoulders, and little boobs, so my physical type is very masculine. People mistake me for a guy all the time. Left to my own devices, my body grows a bit of a mustache, so when I was 19, I just let it grow but would wear skirts and lipstick and look like a guy. I would get kicked out of women’s restrooms all the time; people just didn’t know what to make of me.
In terms of logistics, how did you draw, print, and distribute “Doris” back in the day?
C: There was this whole Kinko’s copy scam back then where you could basically get copies for free; you just had to know the tricks. My process was to type it up on a manual typewriter, cut it up with scissors, gluestick it down, draw little drawings, walk the miles to Kinko’s, scam some copies, and then bring them home and collate them. I rode public transportation a lot so I’d give them to people who looked lonely or sad [laughs]! I’d also hand them out or sell them at shows. I then became best friends with someone who also wrote a zine and we’d go around to independent or anarchist bookstores in the Bay Area and put them in there on consignment. We’d give them like 5 copies and then come back a month later for our $2 or whatever [laughs]. We also ended up driving around the country to different bookstores, putting them on consignment there, and building relationships that way.
From conception to finished product, how long did it take to make an issue?
C: I used to do them three times a year. I would spend a month thinking about what was on my mind and what was rumbling around in my community. I would then try to talk to people about the various subjects I was thinking about in order to develop my thoughts more, so the first month was just living and talking and thinking. Then I would write, get frustrated, and just hang out for a month before doubling down and taking another month to really write and edit a lot. Two months of kinda fucking around and one month of doubling down and putting it out.
During this time, what did you do to support yourself financially?
C: I lived on very little money, which was more possible back then than it is now. I hadn’t gone to college so I didn’t have loans or anything. My job was bizarre and very fortunate; I was a weaver, my aunt was a fashion designer and taught me to weave. So I wove scarves on a loom for rich people.
What was your reason behind ending “Doris”?
C: I had been living in rural Ohio for a long time; I wasn’t around other people very much and I wasn’t inspired to write because part of my process was talking to other people about these ideas. I thought when I moved to Pittsburgh, which is where I live now, that I’d be around more people and have more material and get excited. But at that point I started having a headache that lasted a year and I couldn’t do anything, so I started decreasing my life and then found out that I had to have brain surgery [laughs]. I was like “I can’t keep doing all this stuff” because I was playing music, writing a zine, running a distro, trying to start my therapy business, trying to help this collective project. I’d been trying to write a new issue but was just not very inspired for it…I was also like I’m not part of the public debate, I don’t feel like I have any wisdom to impart that I haven’t imparted already. I felt like there were other, more impactful places that I could’ve put my energy. I was also going to zine fairs to try and be connected but I just hated it. I had a friend who wrote a weekly newsletter and would give out to our friends; that’s what I would do if I were to keep doing it, but I just don’t feel like it. I’m not in the mood for it, my head hurts [laughs].
Do you have any advice for people who want to get into writing zines?
C: One thing that I used to get a lot of questions about was “How can I get my zine out everywhere?” Just…don’t. Don’t focus on that; it’s not about “getting it out everywhere” or getting it noticed in some sort of digital media way. What would happen if you focused on putting it out in a way that was smaller, more personal, and more about building connections with the people around you already and bringing more depth, joy, and vulnerability to those spaces? Personally, that’s my jam. The drive for things to be recognized is a really fucking hard place to be; it’s not representative of what we really need in order to heal. We need to be recognized, but not in this alienated way. I think I made 20 copies of my first zine and at some point made 30 more, and it felt really impactful for me and a couple people who told me about what they read. That can be enough. One thing that’s beautiful about zines is that you can use it as a place to unlearn some of the pressure that school puts on us to get writing perfect. You can use it as a place to be messy and to create the beauty that you want to see; you don’t have to get all the grammar right or write a five paragraph essay, you can find your own voice in it. And finding your own voice in an artistic medium helps you find your own voice in your personal life and in a political world as well. There’s so much pressure to have a performative persona, so how do we use zines as a medium for reclaiming our actual selves?
Thank you so so so much to Cindy for sitting down with me and answering my questions, as well as for “Doris” and for injecting so much heart and vulnerability into a world that sorely needs it. If you haven’t read any “Doris” and are curious to check it out for yourself, here’s a link to where you can support Cindy and purchase a collected anthology of issues!
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes:
*: “Doris” began in 1991.