Show Me Home: A QTBIPOC Digital Zine

Show Me Home is a QTBIPOC Digital Collage Zine created at the conclusion of a 6-week digital collage workshop series presented by Queer The Land and Pride Foundation. In this series, participants used digital collage to explore themes of home: How do you define home? What visuals symbolize home for you?

In this Zine you will find beautiful digital collage work by QTBIPOC contributors who were part of the series facilitated by Lourdez Velasco

show me home collective poem & collage by show me home series group returning to myself/you/us

by Grace Ambrossi

"Home Sweet Home"

by Linda Jannell Chastine

"What is you crying for? Get you some joy!"

by Linda Jannell Chastine

cosmic waves by

René

a house is not a home by

René

show me home

show me home in how we show each other love and care show me home as in hold me as i expand into all the possibilities of my being show me home when your house is full of eggshells show me home in cotton candy skies & golden glimmering seas. show me home in the gardens of your soft beating heart show me home each time we embrace in a hug hello

No need for mirrors, now that every eye is a flower.

returning to myself/you/us

by Grace Ambrossi

home is something that has been passed onto me, lives within me and is created everyday. i reflect on migration and how my mother herself creates home across space and time, across borders, in between both corona, queens and cuenca, ecuador. i layer the different places that have influenced my understandings of home over the image of my mother and her friend in her garden. tending to our earth and is each other is part of creating home. the words on the page are from an essay i wrote to my mother in trying to understand our relationship to each other with/in home.

Home Sweet Home

by Linda Jannell Chastine

This piece is an ode to the feeling I have had and hope to achieve in the future regarding romantic love. The soft moments evocative of rose petals, the experiences that are sweet and sticky like honey, the safety felt from the touch of hands I trust.

I wanted the essence of this piece to reflect a vintage aesthetic, as a nod to the nostalgia humans are known for and the longing often present for a future reminiscent of a past era.

"What is you crying for? Get you some joy!"

by Linda Jannell Chastine

As a Piscean with my moon in Cancer, I am not a stranger to expressing my emotions through tears. As a young person growing up around Black elders who did not understand my expression of emotion, partly because of their inability to express their emotions freely due to racism, misogynoir, and other societal expectations. I felt alone and misunderstood in my family because of the disconnect between generations; one was born into emotional freedom and the other was shaped by a world of restrictions, that they adopted for safety and survival. The Black communal experience, throughout American history, has been to find joy, oftentimes through Christian worship but absolutely through musical expression. So, this piece is a reflection of the complexities of the intergenerational search for healing and joy.

cosmic waves

by René

i've always loved the ocean because it's vast, lifegiving, and beautiful. however, it is also turbulent, dangerous, and unforgiving. much of my upbringing existed between these two extremes. growing up i struggled to conceptualize the idea of a home as a physical place because we were constantly in motion. home took a figurative meaning for me at a young age, home became people. my mama, mi apa, and my brother. the cosmic waves symbolize the expansiveness, limitless, mysterious, and magical ways i've learned to survive through these different cistems. thank you for witnessing my truth(s).

a house is not a home

by René

how many times do we take time out of our days to honor, express gratitude, and/or shower our bodies with care, love, and tenderness? learning to love my physical form --- my first home --has been a journey of tearing down the walls, the windows, and fixtures that were built on my foundation... thankful for my chosen family who has held me, seen me, and cared for me.

What does "Show Me Home" mean to you?

show me home means show me safety. show me a place where i can unmask and rest. show me home in how you embrace me and i embrace you. show me home as in the world building, world shifting love that exists within a space or across people or within myself/yourself/ourselves.

- Grace Ambrossi

to me it means to show the deepest parts of my being that i am readily able to tap into and the parts that i've repressed, buried, and/or uprooted.

- René

Initially, I associated the theme "Show me Home" with the literal definition of home; how I grew up, what experiences shaped me, the physical space and place of home, and the tracings of my ancestors. But having the privilege of witnessing others' contemplation of home, I realized that my definition of home could hold myriad meanings and significance. Home is just as much a culmination of my childhood experiences as it is the feeling I have when I am with a lover or the conversations between my close friends. It could be the breeze fluttering past my ear when I'm hiking in my adopted home, Washington, or the feeling I get on the first sunny day in Seattle after a long rainy winter season. Home is the past, present, and future. It is beauty; it is trauma; it is grief; it is possibility mixed with fantasy and hope; it is a prayer; it is anything I want it to be. But for sure, home is beyond a physical place. Home is formed in my experiences, cradled in the feelings birthed from those experiences. Whenever I need to be reminded of home- here and in the future, I can tap into the feeling and let it guide me there.

-by Linda Jannell Chastine

is home