[Nonfiction]

[A Girl's Guide]

Read it and Weep (or Laugh)

By Tammy Rae Carland, editor of I Amy Carter and J.T.O.

When I started working on the first issue of I Amy Carter, I was attempting to reach out and connect with something that I as afraid of losing because I was moving far away from everyone I loved. I was afraid of losing my frequent contact with my girl friends -- something that has been essential to the quality and continuity of my life. Basically, I started this zine in a state of isolation, and ended up broadening my pool of friends and narrowing my scope of isolation.

Not so consciously, I was also afraid of losing control of these intricate and solid emotional floodgates that I had spent years building up inside of me. These floodgates became an internal self-editing machine that prevent me from revealing too much, too soon, to the wrong people. Sounds healthy enough, doesn't it? Except, for me, it was all about keeping sheltered things I needed to be liberated from. So, in fact, when I was seemingly protecting others from being uncomfortable, I was making myself almost exclusively disassociated (and therefore extremely uncomfortable and invisible) in most social or intimate situations.

When I started I Amy Carter, I was starting to crack -- in the best sense of the word. What I'm talking about is how I needed to get to this place where I could let all the dirty and complicated things touch each other. So I started making this zine where I could flaunt my love of the torrid (and maybe true) lesbian clips from the National Inquirer along side of worldwide statistics about ritualized wife-killing. I could also let myself write from a place I had avoided in the past. That place was unrehearsed, without spellcheck and no editing (okay, maybe a little editing). It was also a place of personal identity which, for me, would be a dyke from a welfare family who experienced an enormous amount of violence and sexual abuse. I made it safe and important to talk about poverty and incest in the same sentence without worrying about backward readings of one equaling the other. Perhaps starting the public conversations about class was the hardest thing I've ever done, and am still trying to do. I tried to do all this with little rhyme or reason. I would just write and cut and paste until it was done. I also think I Amy Carter was a rather funny zine. It had a sense of humor without being self-humiliating. And, oh yeah, most importantly, it was completely made for and by women and girls.

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