Where to Find Zines
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is compromised of five distinct research divisions that are separated by format: Art and Artifacts; Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books; Moving Image and Recorded Sound; Photographs and Prints; and Research and Reference division. Due the material format of zines, most of the resources below are from the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books division and the Research and Reference division. The lists were compiled using this expansive way of defining and identifying zines on the home page. While all of these were not necessarily created with zine culture in mind as we know it now, they fit the working definition of zine on the home page. Currently, The Schomburg Center has a strength in Black, queer zines.
The lists below are not comprehensive and if you would like more information or additional resources, please reach out to the division directly.
Zines in Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books division
To view any of the materials below, you will need to make an appointment in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books division. This division is only servicing patrons with confirmed appointments at this time. For detailed instructions on how to book an appointment, please consult our divisional resource guide.
More on MARB zines coming soon....!
- Anthony Horton papersCall Number: Sc MG 878Publication Date: 2000-2010Anthony Horton was an African-American man who for a period of his life was homeless and lived in the tunnels beneath the subway trains. Together with author/artist Youme Landowne, Horton wrote and illustrated "Pitch Black: Don't be Skerd" (2008) which tells the story of how the two met, his background and his life underground.
- Azalea : a magazine by and for third world lesbians. byCall Number: Sc Rare D 15-5Publication Date: 1977-1983Library has: v. 2, no. 1-3 (Winter 1978-summer/fall 1979) & v. 3, no. 3 (Fall 1980)
- Black Panther Party Harlem Branch filesCall Number: Sc MG 80Publication Date: 1969-1970This collection contains a 'zine' on Huey P. Newton as well as small-circulation community newsletters.
Fire!!: Devoted to younger Negro artists by Call Number: Sc Rare F 82-71Publication Date: Nov 1926With autographs of contributors: Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce, Countee Cullen, Helene Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Aaron Douglas, and Gwendolyn B. Bennett.- Project BlackMass bookCall Number: Sc MG 957Publication Date: 2018Yusuf Hassan (born 1987) is an artist and the founder of BlackMass Publishing. Project BlackMass is a 188-page mixed-media document composed by a collective of Black artists.
- Reginald Harris papersCall Number: Sc MG 805Publication Date: 1970-2016Reginald Harris (1960-) is an African American poet, author, editor, and library administrator. His papers date from 1970 to 2016 and document Harris's creative work, professional career and personal life through journals, correspondence, and files of his writing and public poetry readings.
Box 1 of his collection contains folders of Black Queer zines from the 90s and early 2000s.
Zine scholarship in Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference
Librarians with Spines by
"Librarians with Spines" is an anthology of 9 essays written by 11 radical librarians pushing the boundaries of social justice community service, library and information science, equitable bibliographic taxonomy, and ubiquitous information literacy. Co-edited by Max Macias and Yago Cura, illustrated and designed by Autumn Anglin, and published by HINCHAS Press, this array of minority and queer voices in librarianship and intelligent political art seeks to affirm the importance of innovative, courageous librarians facilitating effective programming and initiatives. Completely funded by a successful GoFundMe campaign and beholden to no organization, committee, nor clique, authors include Jason Alston, Anthony Bishop, Candise Branum, Cathy Camper, A'misa Chiu, Loida Garcia-Febo, kYmberly Keeton, Diane Lopez, Kael Moffat, Mary Rayme, and Aquita Winslow. Topics range from Critlib management to the importance of ethnic caucuses, from zine librarianship to prison librarianship to Hip Hip Information Literacy.
Call Number: Sc E 17-1369ISBN: 9780984539888Publication Date: 2017-04-20
The Social Movement Archive by
What would happen if we start with a critical consideration of archiving that doesn't place the archive or the archivist at its center? What if instead, we begin with material and movements and then ask ourselves: what is the use of archiving this? who is this archive for? The Social Movement Archive examines the role of cultural production within social justice struggles and within archives. This book contains reproductions of political ephemera-zines, banners, stickers, posters, memes, and more-alongside 15 interviews with artists and activists who have worked across a broad range of movements including: women's liberation, disability rights, housing justice, Black liberation, anti-war, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant rights, and prisoner abolition, among others. These images and accompanying conversations illustrate the power of political art and ephemera to transform cultural practices, places, and communities; and its capacity to be a force for disruption in archival spaces. Nora Almeida is a librarian, writer, and environmental activist. She is an Associate Professor in the Library Department at the New York City College of Technology (CUNY) and has been volunteering at Interference Archive since 2015 where she helps organize educational programs, media-making events, exhibitions, and more. She writes about critical pedagogy, social justice, performance, neoliberalism, and place. Jen Hoyer is a New York City based library and archives worker and a long time volunteer at Interference Archive where she works on exhibitions, cataloging, and more. Jen loves working through how archives can help people understand themselves and their place in the world. She currently teaches K-12 students how to think critically about the world around them through the lens of the local history archive at Brooklyn Public Library.
Call Number: Sc F 21-349ISBN: 9781634000895Publication Date: 2020-09-01
Zines in Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference
The materials in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference division are accessible without an appointment. you can reach out to schomburgreference@nypl.org if you have any more questions about accessing their materials.
- 3 dot. byCall Number: Sc News 3dot issue 2 (2015?)Publication Date: 20153 Dot Zine is an annual publication that serves as a forum for invited artists to center and elaborate on marginalized concerns. The zine is made possible by the collaborative effort of many artists, writers, journalist and creatives. 3 Dot was started by artist Devin N Morris as a continuation of his Social Sunday salon conversation series that he hosted with friend. Morris found that the zine format provided a much needed platform to continue breeching very personal dialogues and shedding light on new ideas. As well, it helped align a personal goal of his; showing the works of artists and highlighting concerns of black, brown and marginalized bodies.
Morris, D. (2015). about/contact. 3 dot zine. https://www.3dotzine.com/contact 
Chronology by Call Number: Sc D 19-929ISBN: 9781946433022Publication Date: 2018-09-01Literary Nonfiction. Essay. Winner of the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir. Taking as its starting point an ultimately failed attempt to translate a Sesotho short story into English, CHRONOLOGY explores the spaces language occupies in relationships, colonial history, and our postcolonial past. It is a collage of images and documents, folding on words-that-follow-no-chronology, unveiling layers of meaning of queering love, friendship, death, and power. Traveling from Cape Town to the Schomburg Center in New York, Zahra Patterson's CHRONOLOGY reveals and revels in fragments of the past-personal and the present-political.- Queer Codex: Chile Love byCall Number: SC D 08-2247Publication Date: 2004"Chile Love is the first in ALLGO's Queer Codex zine series, featuring written and visual art by queer men of color of various backgrounds and experiences."
Shotgun Seamstress by Call Number: Sc F 23-244ISBN: 9781593767396Publication Date: 2022-11-29In 2006, Osa Atoe was inspired to create an expression out of the experience of being the only Black kid at the punk show - and Shotgun Seamstress was born. Like a great mixtape where radical politics are never sidelined for an easier ride, Shotgun Seamstress was a fanzine by and for Black punks that expressed, represented, and documented the fullest range of being, and collectively and individually explored 'all of our possibilities instead of allowing the dominant culture to tell us what it means to be Black.' Laid out by hand, and photocopied and distributed in small batches, each issue featured essays, interviews, historical portraits of important artists and scenes, reviews, and more, all paying tribute to musicians and artists that typify free Black expression and interrupt notions of Black culture as a monolith. Featuring figures such as Vaginal Cream Davis, the seminal Black punk band Death, Poly Styrene, Bay Area rocker Brontez Purnell, British post-punker Rachel Aggs, New Yo
The Telescoping Effect Pt. 1 by Call Number: Sc D 21-828ISBN: 9780996005098Publication Date: 2017-02-13On the brink of the 100 year anniversary of the Red Summer of 1919 and the Solar Eclipse of 1919 that would confirm the theory of relativity, an anthropologist seeking to dig up her own family roots becomes entangled in a web of retrocurence that touches upon all of these events. She will discover, in turn, how each of these events have not only shaped the curve of her own family tree, but how they have shifted the very fabric of space-time.- Wade in the water: a year of the movement for black lives byCall Number: Sc D 17-528Publication Date: 2016"In this zine, a collection of 13 young Black Americans - artists, activists, musicians, writers, and scholars - share their own experiences with American anti-Blackness, their thoughts on the movement, and how they've copied along the way. Together they form an emotional and empowering snapshot of Black life in the midst of changing tides." -- Page 4 of cover.
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Call Number: Sc D 18-56ISBN: 9781945509032Publication Date: 2016-12-01Ben Passmore's necessary contribution to the dialogue around race in the United States, Your Black Friend is a letter from your black friend to you about race, racism, friendship and alienation. On the heels of viral online success with 500,000+ views, the revised print edition of the Your Black Friend comic is in gorgeous full color on fancy matte paper stock. Inspired by Frantz Fanon's White Skin, Black Masks, Your Black Friend is just as direct, immediate, and necessary as Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine's Citizen. Known for his politically charged science fiction comics, enthusiastic fans of Passmore's work include Brandon Graham (Island, Image Comics), Carolyn Nowak (Lumberjanes) and Josh Simmons (Fantagraphics).
