By NUR FARAHAIN ABDUL MUTALIB
I was looking for some good reads the other day, when I stumbled upon a booth. Two girls were busy explaining something to some visitors and I decided to take a look. I saw colourful collections of books, but they looked more like newsletters as they were not thick and the front covers had interesting illustrations with fascinating topics such as “Race-ing and Dating” and “The Art of Politics”. So I decided to ask one of the girls about them and she casually asked me, “Have you ever heard of zines?” and I was just appalled by the new term I had just heard.
Zines or also known as fanzine is a self-published magazine with a small circulation of original texts and pictures. Zines were famous back in the 80’s and is more common in the west.
Biawak Gemok Distro is a website which stocks cheap reads for the community such as zines, poetries and flash fictions. It’s Co-Founder and Writer Liyana Dizzy considers zines as the cheaper alternative for good reads. For her, zines are more honest in terms of its content as writers usually write about their experiences or their personal take on certain issues.
She said, “It’s the opposite of a book, it’s definitely cheaper and doesn’t require any sort of special expertise, as long as you can write and people can buy them for like RM5.”
Liyana has been promoting zines for quite some time with her friends and started Biawak Gemok Distro as a platform for writers to submit their writings. She thinks that zines should be brought back to the community as people are longing for more stories beyond the perspectives of the mainstream media.
She then explained that there are a lot of topics covered in zines. Most of the topics are usually beyond what is covered in mainstream publication. Fascinating topics such as assimilation, racism, religion and sex are usually written in a realistic manner.
Liyana said, “We also have alternative history, because obviously history in the mainstream line has a certain narrative and not a lot of things get covered beyond that narration, so we try to look for alternative history.”
Al Ibrahim, 26, who wrote his first zine titled “Race-ing and Dating”, thinks that zines help people to voice out their opinions about specific topics. Al, who is from Nigeria, decided to write about his experience about being a black guy who is living in Malaysia. Little did he know, the zine became a great hit among readers.
He explained, “The feeling is amazing. I received my first feedback from this girl on Facebook who wrote a long post about racism and she tagged me. It was probably one of the best things I’ve experienced, to be able to make an impact on someone out there.”
Al thinks that zines should be promoted more and it can make a huge comeback for the community.
He said, “There are a lot of issues that need to be talked about. Unfortunately, not all of them are being discussed on the mainstream media and apparently, some topics are not covered in every aspect.
“For example racism, you can never take race out of the equation; everything that we do out there will always be tied back to race and people don’t really talk about this openly. Being someone who’s been questioned about my race, I think it is important to write on that perspective so that people know how it feels, being questioned about your race most of the time,” he said.
As for Liyana, she intends to keep on fighting to gain a spot for zine culture in the society. She hopes that more people would start writing for zines and even produce their own zines. Her website, http://biawakgemok.tumblr.com/ will always welcome writings from anyone who is willing to share their stories with the world.
“When you feel strongly about something and you just don’t know what to do about it, you write.
“You write and you publish it so that you can let that feeling go, and to know that someone is going to read it and get affected by it, it’s the best feeling ever because you know you did something about your feeling,” Liyana said.
Zines or also known as fanzine is a self-published magazine with a small circulation of original texts and pictures. Zines were famous back in the 80’s and is more common in the west.
Biawak Gemok Distro is a website which stocks cheap reads for the community such as zines, poetries and flash fictions. It’s Co-Founder and Writer Liyana Dizzy considers zines as the cheaper alternative for good reads. For her, zines are more honest in terms of its content as writers usually write about their experiences or their personal take on certain issues.
She said, “It’s the opposite of a book, it’s definitely cheaper and doesn’t require any sort of special expertise, as long as you can write and people can buy them for like RM5.”
Liyana has been promoting zines for quite some time with her friends and started Biawak Gemok Distro as a platform for writers to submit their writings. She thinks that zines should be brought back to the community as people are longing for more stories beyond the perspectives of the mainstream media.
She then explained that there are a lot of topics covered in zines. Most of the topics are usually beyond what is covered in mainstream publication. Fascinating topics such as assimilation, racism, religion and sex are usually written in a realistic manner.
Liyana said, “We also have alternative history, because obviously history in the mainstream line has a certain narrative and not a lot of things get covered beyond that narration, so we try to look for alternative history.”
Al Ibrahim, 26, who wrote his first zine titled “Race-ing and Dating”, thinks that zines help people to voice out their opinions about specific topics. Al, who is from Nigeria, decided to write about his experience about being a black guy who is living in Malaysia. Little did he know, the zine became a great hit among readers.
He explained, “The feeling is amazing. I received my first feedback from this girl on Facebook who wrote a long post about racism and she tagged me. It was probably one of the best things I’ve experienced, to be able to make an impact on someone out there.”
Al thinks that zines should be promoted more and it can make a huge comeback for the community.
He said, “There are a lot of issues that need to be talked about. Unfortunately, not all of them are being discussed on the mainstream media and apparently, some topics are not covered in every aspect.
“For example racism, you can never take race out of the equation; everything that we do out there will always be tied back to race and people don’t really talk about this openly. Being someone who’s been questioned about my race, I think it is important to write on that perspective so that people know how it feels, being questioned about your race most of the time,” he said.
As for Liyana, she intends to keep on fighting to gain a spot for zine culture in the society. She hopes that more people would start writing for zines and even produce their own zines. Her website, http://biawakgemok.tumblr.com/ will always welcome writings from anyone who is willing to share their stories with the world.
“When you feel strongly about something and you just don’t know what to do about it, you write.
“You write and you publish it so that you can let that feeling go, and to know that someone is going to read it and get affected by it, it’s the best feeling ever because you know you did something about your feeling,” Liyana said.