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“I spent my childhood summers at my father’s farm outside Buenos Aires. After the long highway drive and dusty dirt road, as soon as we arrived, I would run to the front of the car and begin the delicate process of unsticking the crushed butterflies from the still hot radiator. Most of them would be terminal, but one or two would cling to my finger, slowly regain center, revive and eventually fly away, always leaving behind some dust from their wings.“ - The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams (Alessandra Sanguinetti)
Our July issue will explore key moments or “milestones” in our lives. Experiences with immigration, being a part of a family while coming into our identity, “coming out”, transition, and separation. This issue we focus on self defining moments, moments where we dare to not let others define us.
amanda Acknowledging femininity. Watercolor on multimedia paper Acknowledging my attraction to my own gender, while feeling the pressure of society to reject my feelings.
ba r f troop
What is one thing you learned from one another being in the group? We’re used to working by ourselves, but by being in a group, we learned communicating to get to an end goal makes things less stressful on the individual and more cohesive! In what ways has your friendship with each other impacted the music you make? It’s great always having a support system, from people to cheer you on to people to help you revise your work and make it the best it can be. How does being in a group with other women, help your music and message? We’re able to experience the same criticisms together, from praise to backlash, so it definitely strengthens our message because it gets to be 5x as powerful, and it’s great to be able to have other artists who are women to work with at any time. The accessibility is great. What advice would you give to young women, who are trying to start a music career or a group? Be honest to yourself, find your niche, use social media effectively to get a following, then take over the world. Besides music, what else inspires your work in Barf Troop? Collectively and individually? B: Cartoons, bugs. Babefield: Mixed media. Babenstein: Cigarettes and alcohol. Baberella Fox: Photography. JB: Whatever’s going on around me.
Stylistically, how do you five differ? BB: I’m definitely the most cartoony out of everyone, so I love to work with fun cartoony noises and samples from twinkles to boings and even Pikachu’s voice. JB: I’m the most into pop culture, so I love to reference stuff that’s currently going on, I’m definitely up on the latest trends and it definitely shows in my music. Babe Field: I tend to go with more of an old-school type influence. Baberella Fox: I try to keep a theme of being cute and gross. Babenstein: I’m the most into horror/ gore stuff, so my songs might have a bit more of a morbid undertone. Do you think the complexities of your identity as a young black girl inform your lyrics? Raps about camp and anime, sex, and horror films; It feels more like a narrative about curiosity and adventure, rather than a loss of innocence. The complexities of our identities definitely play a role in our writing. We all grew up trying to find ourselves along the way just like anyone else, so we try to combine all the feelings we’ve been able to remember we have felt. From our first rejections, first triumphs, current emotions, be it happiness or turmoil, and we try to find a way to incorporate all of that into our lyrics! We don’t feel as if innocence is lost, some people just become a bit less in touch with it as they get older and hardened by the world around them, but it can always be tapped into again. Interview by Asha
L-R, top to bottom (page opposite): Babenstein, Babeo Baggins (BB), Baberella Fox, Justin Baber (JB).
DARK PARTS - TO LIVE IN THE SUN trigger warning: colorism
my family moved from california to the yongsan district of seoul, south korea, after my father lost his business. it was december, cold, gray. that first night, we slept on the floor, my three sisters and i, on a sprawling carpet embroidered with birds and trees. i began the first grade in a sleepy immigrant daze, spending first couple of weeks avoiding schoolwork, copying da vinci pieces into my notebook, humming to myself alone at my desk. but my presence was hard to ignore - fully korean, yet unable to speak the language, fluent in english, yet a poor student, and most importantly, i was much darker than the rest of the class. dark - dark like my father, like my father’s father, his father’s father, a cycle leading back to me, barely a child, now displaced in a nation desperately scrubbing at its dark parts, in hopes of a lighter future.
without going into specifics i describe images and words: the antiblack slurs used against me by my elementary school bullies, to be known as a caveman, as a freak, waiting in line at food stands to buy my second grade crush a snack, only to have him refer to me as a slave, hiding under my desk, later awakened by the loud voices again reducing me to the color of my skin, the hair on my arms, my lack of a native tongue, each factor further contributing to the image of myself as a creature rather than the girl i was, four years of looking into a broken mirror. winter went on and snow drifted over the han river, over the playgrounds, beautiful as i held the hands of my sisters and slid over an infinite puddle of ice. but against the sheets of white, i could only see the distortion of my own reflection, darkness intensified, magnified. but this state of mind, the erasure of myself was gradual, and never conscious. though my korean improved, i chose silence. i stopped wearing any clothes exposing my skin, avoiding the sun. for a year, my parents would beg me to leave the house, to go to school, to speak up, to stand up for myself. school continued and i became a shadow, allowing myself to fall behind. i was fully convinced of my own ugliness and fully traumatized of the great divide clearly marked between myself and the people i desperately wanted to call my friends. the tragedy lay in the fact that whiter skin i perceived to be the bridge between myself and everyone else. in this case, i was the great divide, and regrettably, there was no way to change the unfortunate twistings and turnings of things. years later, the snow melted and the sun came out, and i found myself on a plane ride back to california, still wondering if there was anyway to win back the lost approval of the four years past.
but i won back these years of lost approval when i allowed myself to challenge the belief that it was my responsibility to win the approval of others, rather than the responsibility of others to affirm my existence. i arrived in california and i felt the heat against my paled shoulders for the first time in four years. that summer i lay on my back in the pool and stared directly into the sun. and there what i realized was not that i am beautiful, but that there’s nothing wrong with a little sun, a little warmth. there was nothing wrong with me in the first place. i consider it a personal milestone not to achieve self-love, which is understandably difficult for everyone of us, but to realize the lies behind the world’s ways of socializing, teaching, and indoctrinating self-hate. my achievement is not in realizing that i am beautiful but that they were, and they are, wrong about me. achieving the ability to take the weight off my shoulders, to turn the repulsion towards myself into a healing process in understanding, to love the skin i live in, to reclaim my body, to live in the sun.
By KELLEY DONG
GALINA RIOS 1st Casualty, 2nd Casualty, 3rd Casualty (in order) Silver gelatin prints and acrylic on paper Around five years ago I lost my father. From this great lost in my life I developed my passion for the arts. I’ve been struggling a lot to make a piece of my lost especially because two years ago I lost my grandfather which was one of the few connections to my father that I had left in this world. So when I took photography class it opened doors to ways to express my lost and beginning to learn the history of my family. These three pieces depict three losses from my family in the order; first my grandmother, then my father , and then my grandfather.
khadija mohamed I’ve always been the type of person to bottle up emotions, whether it was sadness or fear, happiness or contentment; I’ve always bottled it up inside. Although the good feelings within the bottle would neutralize the bad, sometimes that wasn’t enough and things would bubble over. I’ve never really been the type to take my feelings out on anyone (I guess you could say that I do sometimes take it out on people but almost immediately after I’d apologize for 5 years straight), I needed a productive release. I started writing at the age of 14 but I never really stuck with it until my senior year of high school back in 2012 when the level of stress was too much and the amount of studying to be done tied me down to my desk. Nothing much has changed since then (I’m now entering my 3rd year of university) but I’ve been writing regularly, and I find that I write the most when I feel the most, and the work featured here today shows that.
ONE. Untitled #1 (2013) i. How can something as beautiful as you be considered a weed? Is it because your beauty trumps anything surrounding it? Or perhaps it’s because they don’t understand how a little seed like you once were was carried so far away from home and able to blossom while the others rot trying. You’re not a weed but instead you are what they can never become no matter how hard they tried. You are beautiful. ii. This is to all the little girls with curls that can withstand gravity and live in a country that doesn’t feel like your own despite living there for all of your years. Be proud of every little hair that lies on top of your precious little head. Your curls can do something that the hair of the other little girls in the playground cannot; they can curl around your precious little stories, struggles and secrets like no other hair strand can. No matter how many times you straighten your hair like theirs, it curls right back up. No matter how many times they force you to the ground, you get right back up. iii. I once fell in love with a boy whom I saw in the coffee shop one rainy morning. I watched him for hours as he read through page after page of a book. He looked beautiful in the moments he wasn’t aware of himself. So as he continued to read, I decided to write him a little story of a boy who looked the most beautiful when he forgot about the world around him. I called for the waitress next to me to hand him the paper for me and left. I like to think that he enjoyed that because it stopped raining and the sun was shining as if it never left. iv. She called me last night and told me that she missed me dearly. She didn’t miss me nearly enough. v. please.
TWO. While you slept (2012)* She lied there; the sounds of her soft snoring filled the room. Her long dark brown locks strewn across the pillow. She looked peaceful, despite the vicious sounds of thunder roaring out in the near distance. How she was able to sleep was beyond me. The room was filled with the fresh scent of rain, tiny droplets making the room their shelter as they slid down the green leaves of her sunflowers sitting atop of her desk. The room was dark, but not in a scary intimidating way. Lightning struck the ground somewhere near the tiny inner city apartment building. Thunder, right behind him. I buried my head into the pillow next to hers. The smell of her hair filled my nostrils. I felt safe. The warmth radiating off of her body provided a sweet comfort from this rainy night. Slowly, the soft sounds of the rain mixed with the sounds of her slumber weighed down on my eyelids. Sleep came over me like a fuzzy blanket. Soon, all that I heard was the sound of her heart beat filling my ears.
THREE. Raindrops and late evenings. (2012)* The sounds of rain crashing into the windowsill filled the somewhat empty apartment. The wind suddenly began to pick up, as did the intensity of the rain fall. Brilliant white lightning would strike somewhere within the crowded city with the sound of the roaring thunder trailing not too far behind. The rain had always fascinated him as a child; he often wondered how long of a distance the tiny rain droplets have to travel until they hit his warm skin. No one had an answer for him. He got up from his laptop and pulled a chair, his favorite worn out leather couch made for one, to sit on as he watched the rain fall from the heavens. Periodically, the bright flash from the lightning would fill every corner of his living room leaving no place for the darkness to hide. Lazily, he ran his thin long fingers through locks of his somewhat wavy hair. His eyes becoming more and more hooded as time went by. The sound of the now gentle pitter patter of the rain slowly lulling him to sleep. Just as quickly as it began, the storm ended and night arrived to keep watch over him. There he lied; sprawled out atop of his seat, fast asleep.
FOUR. Moonlight. (2011) I want to show you the reasons why I love the night so much, and maybe even get you to appreciate it yourself a little more too. What if I told you that you look beautiful under the moonlight, and that I dream of placing soft kisses across your shoulder and down the length of your arm, would you let me? I want to see the look on your face as you struggle to stay awake, maybe even hum a lullaby or two to you. I just want you to be there during my happiest hours, and hopefully one day you’ll do the same too.
FIVE. “Talk to me, please.” (2013) I remember eagerly awaiting for my mother to come home from a long day at work. I would often spend the time I waited trying to remember as many details about my day as possible so I could recite it to her exactly as it occurred earlier in the day. She would eventually come home, purse and lunch bag in hand, and exhausted. She was always exhausted, always too busy, always too stressed (which was a concept I had yet to learn at the time). “Wait,” She would say, “let me just shower, pray, wash the dishes, clean the kitchen, clean the rest of the house, change the baby’s diapers, feed him, make something for your dad to eat when he comes home, do a million and one different things before I can sit down and have a cup of tea as I listen to your story.” I took hours and by that time most of the details were foggy at best and I no longer had the burning desire to tell her. When she did listen, she was never fully there, always a million things on her mind (none of which were my story). Soon she learned to say “I am just too tired” or “I just don’t want to talk to you”. I grew to keep how my day went to myself and accepted the fact that mom was just too busy. I learned to lock the stories and secrets inside of my head, where they would accumulate over the years. Soon my lips fused together into a padlock and the key to open it was somewhere in the corner of my mind along with the stories of my childhood on the playground where they gathered dust. Mom was no longer as busy as she used to be, but now that undivided attention is too much for me after going years without landing on your radar (only coming to the surface to yell at me). “Why won’t you talk to me?” “Am I not your mother?” “Why aren’t we as close as other mothers and daughters?” “It’s like I’m talking to a wall.” “Talk to me, please.” Although I’ve grown a lot taller since I was younger, but that feeling of smallness and insignificance is something I have yet to outgrow. I have many stories that I want to tell you but instead I open my mouth to say “I am just too tired” or “I just don’t want to talk to you”.
*two & three are parts of a series I wrote based off a very long dream I had one night that has managed to staple its self to my brain and I still can’t forget it.
SIX. various snippets (2012 – 2013)
i. His breath wrapped around me tightly. ii. Beneath all of the sorrow lies a scared little girl who wants nothing but to be held. The tears shed are like rain to her, tiny little hot droplets that warm her cold skin. Anger, regret and fatigue watch over her as she sleeps. She yearns for the day when someone, anyone, comes to save her from this monster, to save her from herself. iii. I like to write about emotions I’ve never felt hoping that words could make me feel the way that people can’t. iv. please love me as much as you love the thought of me or love me as much as I think of you
v. your tears taste like my secrets. vi. I long for a touch from someone I’ve never met. I long to travel to places I’ve never seen. I long for things that don’t exist, figments of my imagination. I’m forever stuck in a world that you can’t see, waiting for you to come along and keep me company. I wait for something that will never happen. vii. seeds of doubt in her mind grew into large beautiful flowers made out of some of her darkest fears
郑思韵 Sylvia Zheng. Hi! I’m Sylvia. For this issue Milestones, I took on the position of head design editor where I was left in charge of creative direction of the zine. I’m a 19 year old visual communication student and illustrator. Working with a team of girls who identify with a similar struggle to mine has been liberating and honestly fulfilling. I hope you have enjoyed the July issue with all the talented submissions by all the creative girls worldwide. See you soon! contact: sylvia.zheng@mail.com
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donate and submit! Rad Girl Collective is always looking for ways to grow, and we look to our readers and contributors for their support. We would like to make this zine as accessible as possible so that we can widen our audience and continue to empower young girls. In this spirit, we would like to begin printing paper copies of this zine for distribution at festivals and events across North America. To make this plan feasible, we are asking for donations to cover our printing costs. You can contribute and help us achieve our goal at radgirlcollective.com.
*** RGC is also looking for talented submitters to share their art and experiences with us in our next zine. We will be posting details and deadlines regarding the next issue on our website soon, and we look forward to seeing what you will share with us. Our contributors make up the core of what we do at RGC, and we will try to accommodate as many mediums stories as possible. We believe that every experience is important, and we encourage any potential submitter to let their voice be heard.
Contributing artists in order of appearance: Galina Rios, Isabella Thielen, Amanda, Barf Troop, Kelley Dong, Khadija Mohamed. Thanks to everyone who contributed and was a part of this July issue, Milestones. We hope to see you in the next issue of Rad Girl Collective!
radgirlcollective.org issuu.com/radgirlcollective twitter.com/radgirlco