THE BIRTH AND EVOLUTION OF SISTAH ZINE
How did SISTAH zine emerge?
SISTAH zine emerged from a campaign at the UCL Justice Collective to amplify the cause of Sistah Space, a London-based domestic violence support organisation for women of African heritage, who were facing eviction from their building.
Their work to protect and empower victims of domestic violence spoke to a broader theme of liberation of women and femmes that we wanted to create a platform for discussion of. So, SISTAH zine was created. The proceeds from the inaugural digital issue of SISTAH will be donated to Sistah Space.
There are myriad more women and femmes working for liberation in a whole host of contexts: from decolonising academia to attaining reproductive justice to tackling sexual harassment. The zine is a space for those stories and ideas to flourish.
We want to show where women and femmes are creating space for themselves at the tables of politics, social justice, health & arts and culture, whilst also highlighting how far is to go before we can say liberation has truly been realised.
How will SISTAH zine evolve?
The theme of SISTAH’s inaugural digital issue is “liberation”; we have explored this theme through the lenses of politics, sex & reproductive justice, climate justice & environmentalism and arts & culture. The zine contains essays, interviews, poetry & realms of visual artworks.
We would love to continue to publish work under this broad theme; though we have endeavoured to cover as much as possible in this inaugural issue, there are myriad stories and ideas we still want to explore and share with our readers.
To that end, we hope to open up SISTAH zine’s digital platform for rolling submissions in the near future, so we can continue these essential discussions around the theme of liberation.
Further, we plan to publish full zine issues 3 times a year. These will be available on our digital platform but we hope SISTAH will prove popular enough that we will be able to go to print! Stay tuned…
The proceeds of our inaugural issue are going to Sistah Space. We plan for each issue to act as a fundraiser for a different organisation, each being one whose work embodies our theme of liberation. Please get in touch (sistahzine09@gmail.com // @sistahzine) if you have suggestions of organisations we could fundraise for.
How can I be involved?
Rolling submissions
We ask that you pitch your ideas for essays, interviews and articles to us in advance of writing and submitting them. Get in touch with us via email, sistahzine09@gmail.com, or @sistahzine on social media if you’d like to discuss a pitch for an essay, interview or article.
Poetry, prose & photography/artwork submissions are also taken, commissioned or noncommissioned, via email.
Digital/print issue
Follow our Instagram & Facebook accounts @sistahzine to keep up to date with information about our full issues - we will post information about themes/commissions and pitch/submission deadlines and also preview some content there.
As above, pitches & submissions will be taken via email.
What principles underpin SISTAH zine?
SISTAH zine is dedicated to the exploration of ideas and the amplification of voices of those for whom mainstream media and euro patriarchal academia has not provided sufficient space.
In Audre Lorde’s words, “where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each recognise our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockery of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own.” SISTAH is a platform inspired by this very idea.
SISTAH rejects the global systems of white supremacy, patriarchy & capitalism that make too many lives on earth unlivable. To that end, we are dedicated to exploration of abolitionist ideas. As Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan noted in an interview with SISTAH zine, these systems are constructions and “by stating that these ideas are constructions, that they have a beginning and can therefore have an end, we can bring them to an end by having alternative ideas, building alternative constructions.”
