That Doesn’t Happen to Black Kids!
This is my Zine on surviving child abuse and violence. It has personal stories and resources. I’ve also included a short letter you can customise and copy for handing out at potentially triggering situations.
Zine is handwritten in black and white. A few hand drawings and a photo. 36 pages half size (A5)
I decided to put the complete zine on surviving child abuse up on this blog for free. You can download, print and read it. You can also repost it with Credit to Jacq Applebee.
There is a massive trigger warning – abuse on this zine. Please be gentle with yourself whilst and after you read it.
Why free? Survivors of childhood abuse (especially People of Colour) are more likely to experience poverty. I usually sell this zine, but it is too important a subject for me to keep aside for those able to buy it. Plus, with many of my followers living outside the U.K, postage costs are prohibitive. So I hope everyone gets something out of this free resource.
.
Herbs For Trauma
The format’s a little odd. The middle page of the zine takes up only 1/2 of a piece of legal paper. So the PDF will print two side-by-side copies of the middle page onto one sheet of legal paper. If you cut that in half, you’ll get two separate middle pages for every copy of the PDF printed.
.
An Activist Guide to Domestic Violence
From Planting Seeds
.
.
.
.
De Ja Vu #1
.
.
.
.
My Body My Pleasure My Choice
A positive sexuality booklet for young people by Generation Five.
.
.
.
Let’s Talk: Feminist Communication…
With the full sub-title “Feminist Communication for Radicalizing Sex, Consent, & Interpersonal Dynamics,” “Let’s Talk” is a helpful zine exploring the connections between feminist communication, consent, interpersonal dynamics, and healing from abuse. Its focus on how we communicate with each other makes it worth reading, even for those already familiar with concepts of consent. It’s written in an engaging way and includes valuable information on gendered differences in communication, communicating boundaries and triggers, and consent. There’s also a number of activities aimed an encouraging further discussion and reflection.
.
Strategies For Survivors
This is a one page zine/pamphlet put together by the Philly Survivor Support Collective that offers suggestions for survivors and communities dealing with sexual assault. Specifically, it is about setting goals for what you’d like to accomplish and what healing could look like in a survivor’s life and in their community.
.
And Still I Rise
a Zine About Domestic Violence by Caitlin Grusauskas December 2003
.
.
.
If I Could Live in Hope; Sexual Abuse and Survival
.
.
.
.
your beautiful brusied legs Issue #1
A zine of poetry and prose by Jeana Harris over a collage of personal treasures, letters, photographs and love notes. 22 doubled sided pages in black and white.
.
.
Your Beautiful Bruised Legs Issue #2
a poetry zine featuring writing by Alfredo Landa, Nicole Berenger, Spencer Hudson, Amanda Capps and Jeana Harris.
.
.
.
Your Beautiful Bruised Legs Issue #3
The latest issue of the collaborative poetry zine featuring writing by Cody Brown, Marisa Mejia and Jeana Harris.
.
.
.
Resources for Supporters of Sexual Assault Survivors:
A Peer Counseling Primer by Basil
“the basic premise of peer counseling, as I see it is that everyone is born in touch with their natural essence and divine path. but, through the process of socialization — abusive and oppressive or not — we have been thwarted from that path and connection to it.
counseling is a way to give us the space to be listened to in a non-judgemental way and the space for us to be able to experience and express our emotions openly. through this process we can reconnect with our divine nature.
peer counseling is the facilitation of this process with peers working in both roles of counselor and client. opposite to the relationship between a client and their therapist — someone who is paid for their services and someone who possibly has no connection to the clients’ life — peer counseling offers a way to build community while supporting the mental health of that communities members. ideally, it is a process where people support each other in our own autonomy and connections with our self and everything around us.”
.
Active Listening Skills for Sexual Assault Survivor Support- from Medic Wiki
.
Supporting a Survivor of Sexual Assault: a Primer
a collective effort by Ubuntu and MARC (Men Against Rape Culture), published by BrokenBeautiful Press.
.
.
Support Zine + Apoyo (spanish language version) by Cindy Crabb of Doris Zine.
” an anthology I put together about supporting abuse survivors. A lot of people have written to me and said that this helped them identify as survivors, and to find a way forward in their lives, find ways to change their patterns and find support and healing. This zine includes the consent questions that Andrea, Able and I came up with, and they are great way for people to start talking about consent, either with their partner(s) or with their friends.This zine is not just for survivors, but is also for people who are friends and partners with survivors, to help them understand. ”
Entropy
The most powerful and hopeful zine I’ve ever read about incest survival, body memory, trauma and healing. Peregrine spent years writing it. It is not a raw testimonial, but an unfolding of his story, starting with his discovery that he was a childhood incest surviver, with intense body memories but not many specific fact memories – and the difficulties of belief and denial, within himself and his family.
So many men I know are sexual abuse survivors, and I have seen very few zines written by men about it. I know this zine will help so many people. It is great regardless of your gender!
I recommend this zine for everyone – regardless of whether or not you are an abuse survivor. It is an essential peice of writing for us all.
Generation Five
Towards Transformative Justice
generation FIVE has spent the last decade, with allies across movements and across the country, developing Transformative Justice. Transformative Justice is an approach to respond to and prevent child sexual abuse and other forms of violence that puts transformation and liberation at the heart of the change. It is an approach the looks at the individual and community experiences as well as the social conditions. It is an approach that looks to integrate both personal and social transformation.
- Our aim was to develop intervention and prevention that aligned with:
our analysis of child sexual abuse as both one of the symptoms and perpetuators of oppression and violence - politics committed to systemic change and liberation our commitment to healing, agency, and accountbility
- the actual relationships and situations in which child sexual abuse happens the oppression and limitations of state responses. Through this we developed Transformative Justice. We will spend the next decade, with so many others exploring similar approaches, learning to apply the principles and practices of Transformative Justice.
A positive sexuality booklet for young people
Brainscan Zine #21: Irreconcilable Differences
I haven’t made an issue Brainscan in four years and I hope that this zine helps to explain why. Brainscan 21 explores my recognition of being in an emotionally abusive relationship, the attempts on both parts to right wrongs, the failure to do so, and gathering the strength to take the next step.
What if your private life in your relationship is vastly different than what other people see? When do you know you are in an emotionally abusive relationship? How to you gain the strength to get out of it? What do you do when you know you can’t handle the burden alone? What do you do when you feel so alone and terrified of the consequences of leaving, when if it means losing friends, a home, a job and a way life that you love?
These are just some of the ideas explored in this zine through a three year personal narrative that also challenges you to examine your relationships with power, to identify how you express the power you have, and also how you relate to the power that of others possess. But most of all this, zine is about revelation, rebirth, and growth.
44 pages, half sized
Tara Jay
Blackout is a personal/memoir zine about memory and trauma.
“a memoir-fragment zine” Fragments of growing up poor, being hungry, working cornfields at age 13, physical abuse, needing to be the “sane” one, and the difficulty of creating a coherent memory out of the moments. the difficulty of moving in life. panic, self-sabotage, creative mania. imagination and memory. So beatuiful and dark. – Cindy Crabb
Mend My Dress
Mend My Dress: selected zines 2005-2007
Neely Bat Chestnut has compiled her zines put out between 2005-2007, which include the first six issues of Mend My Dress, as well as Dear Step Dad and Grit and Glitter, in a comprehensive anthology of early work. Chestnut’s zines are well respected in the zine community.Her zines cover issues ranging from incest, self-harm, the riot grrrl movement, feminism, friendship, fairytale, and healing as she reflects on her childhood and coming-of-age.
Mend My Dress #10
4 one sheets together in 1 zine: Creating security and home and refusing to leave over and over, depression + trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel. As always, in Neelys beautiful dark and loving style that I love so much.
The Miniskirt
Powerful zine written by 3 survivors of sexual violence who “were lucky to find one another and who grew together by hearing each other’s stories.” Fierce stories about surviving multiple rapes by strangers; rage and calm, fighting not to be ashamed, superpowers and those powers being taken away, survival and rebuilding a life post-rape. – Cindy Crabb
Ugly Glasses
Intense zine about having being stalked, 15 years after having being sexually assaulted and stalked by the person. Ways he manipulated her when she was 19; being a survivor, and the way the manipulation makes it hard to know No — how saying No is no longer empowering when it has been said so many times — how difficult it becomes to know what is normal or appropriate behavior. Working and taking steps to feel safe in spite of his return to stalking, including telling her boss and making a plan for if he showed up there. “The more people I tell, the safer I am.
Khristina Acosta / No Shame Distro
Birthday Party
What To Keep, What to Give Away #1
personal writing about abuse – trying to change pattterns like kissing someone and then knowing that they won’t be able to say no and it will always lead to sex. Looking at the ways rape culture is perpetuated, entitlement, race. Audre Lorde, power dynamics, slut shaming of self. Self love. Very personal and insightful.
.
What to Keep What to Give Away #2
great zine about trauma and trying to get rid of past defense mechanisms, blackout hookups and sexual assault/coersion, intrusive thoughts, racism, decolonial love as a test of praxis as people of color and ways they have internalized white supremacy, sex and relationships and panic and dissociation. healing.
Activist Journeys 