Barbara:		Please state your name and age, and what you do for the zine.
Corgan:		My name is Corgan Duke. I’m a senior in high school, and I’m 17. I edit, produce, and write for the zine, and do everything for it. The zine was Jeanne’s and my idea.
Saundra:		My name is Saundra Campbell, and I am 17 and a senior in high school. I contribute to the zine and help edit it, and help distribute it, too.
Jeanne:		My name is Jeanne Irving. I’m a freshman [first-year student] in college, and I’m 18 years old. I basically edit, write, distribute, copy, and help lay out the zine.

Barbara:		How did you come to start a zine?
Corgan:		Seventeen magazine actually did an article about zines where they had people send them in, and they picked one that was the best. So this zine called Dork won. Jeanne and I ordered a copy of Dork, and we received it, and we thought, “Oh, we can totally do this; we do dumb things all the time.” So, that is what we did. We made our first issue of Burnt Beauty.
Saundra:		I didn’t know about zines until Corgan came to school one day, and she’s, like, “We’re doing a zine. Do you want to write for it?” And I said, “OK,” and that was when I came into the picture.
Barbara:		Did she explain to you what a zine was?
Saundra:		Yeah, she did. She brought it to school, and I looked at it. So, I figured out what a zine was. I had never heard of one and had never seen one. It never occurred to me.
Barbara:		Did you start looking at other ones on the Internet? Or did you just start writing yours? Or what did you do?
Corgan:		I think we actually started and got the majority of the way done with Burnt Beauty before we got too many other zines. We didn’t know too much about zines when we did our first issue.
Barbara:		Were your reading Bust [a zine that became a commercial magazine] at the time? Didn’t Courtney Love write for it?
Corgan:		I don’t think we were reading Bust at the time. We had no idea about zines, as far as that goes, before we started doing one. We learned by doing. When we had all these copies, and we were, like, “What are we supposed to do with these?” We found out about distribution -- distros -- and how people mail them, and how much people charge, and how that kind of stuff works.
Barbara:		How did you find that out?
Corgan:		The Internet.
Jeanne:		There’s a huge time lag in all of our issues between when we started and when we’re done. So we had been working on the zine for a while, and we had time to find out about zines.
Saundra:		We didn’t read Bust until later. There were some cool articles that I read, but I wouldn’t say we were influenced by Bust at all.
Corgan:		The first issue of Bust that I read had Janeane Garofalo [an actress] was on the front, and that was why I picked it up. I got it at Barnes and Noble [a bookstore] or somewhere like that. I was, like, “Well this is kind of interesting.” I considered myself a feminist in issue 1. I wrote a feminist article in issue 1, but it’s vastly different from how I would describe feminism today. I think the Bust thing was more issue 2. It’s not like I’m a real subscriber or anything. I think it’s cool.
Barbara:		Do you read it in hard copy?
Corgan:		Yeah. They have a website, but I don’t know what they do on the website except offer free e-mail and sell stuff.
Barbara:		So, Jeanne and Corgan came into it together? And then Saundra came in later?
Corgan:		Yeah. We actually asked all my friends, but Saundra was the only one who came through.
Saundra:		I thought it was a really, really cool idea. It hadn’t occurred to me before so I wanted to write for it.

Barbara:		What’s your goal in writing a zine? Why do you want to write one?
Corgan:		We started because it was fun, and it was interesting. We thought, “Hey, we can do this.”
Saundra:		I basically just do it to amuse myself because I have things I want to write down. I realized I really didn’t care if other people read it or not.
Barbara:		So, it’s just for your own satisfaction?
Saundra:		I like doing it. I like cutting things out and gluing them down.
Corgan:		There are some very world-changing zines. They are very into politics, and they want people to read their zine. Ours isn’t one of those. We don’t think we’re starting the revolution.
Saundra:		Yeah. I want to write crap.
Barbara:		But all the things you do write about.... You do write about a range of social justice issues, not just crap.
Corgan:		Yeah, we do. But it’s more for people who don’t have any clue about anything that we’re talking about. A lot of people who used to get our zine had no idea what a zine was, and so it was kind of like those ideas were first being introduced to them -- whereas most people who would be considered part of the zine community would already know. It’s kind of like preaching to the choir. But most of the people who read our zine are first-time zine readers. So, that was kind of important, too, and that was on our mind. So, if crap is on our mind, we’ll write about crap. But if something serious is on our mind -- which Jeanne and I try to do -- that’s what we write about. It’s a nice mixture.
Barbara:		So your zine is not just a personal zine? It’s not just like personal poetry?
Saundra:		There are some zines that are just “the way I felt today,” or “I’m feeling like this.” That’s not the way I want to write. I laugh at that. I know I shouldn’t because some people like to write like that, and it’s a good thing for them to do. But I think it’s corny.
Corgan:		Some personal zines come off OK, and I can understand how people can have it be their thing. It’s not our thing. We’re not, like, “I cried for 5 hours today.” I don’t need to commit that to paper. And, I think that if I looked back on it later, I would want to cry again because I wrote that down. We don’t think anyone would care about that. I know some people who pull it off well in an artistic way, but it sure isn’t us.
Jeanne:		I don’t think that we even talk that way, period. We’re not really touchy, real emotional people.
Corgan:		Yeah. I think our zine is in that gray area between political and social.
Barbara:		Why do you think it’s not political? Because you do address political issues, like CoinTelPro [an FBI counter-intelligence program]. You do border issues, you do bilingual education stuff [the zinesters live in a southwestern U.S. state that borders Mexico and has a large Spanish-speaking population]. Why would you say it’s not political?
Corgan:		Because its purpose is not to make a political statement. We didn’t get together and say, “Hey, let’s write this great political manifesto.”
Jeanne:		I don’t expect someone who’s racist to pick up our zine and suddenly not be racist. I think that if you’re 14 years old and you pick up our zine, and you know you’re not racist but you really can’t assert yourself as to why and back yourself up, and back up your arguments, our zine can help in that way.
Barbara:		There are some cases, though, where I’ve gotten the impression that you are trying to change some people’s opinions. Like the conversation with Saundra -- the three of you talking about feminism. I kind of got the impression that you were trying to change Saundra’s mind.
Saundra:		I wrote the article first, and they put rebuttals in it, after the fact. And I’m, like, “Sure, go ahead.”
Corgan:		We were putting it together, and Jeanne and I were, like, “We want to respond to that.”
Saundra:		And that’s fine with me. I don’t expect people to agree with me because a lot of my beliefs are quite unpopular.
Corgan:		That article was really unfair, though, because we did get the last word.
Saundra:		A lot of the things I said then I still agree with now.
Corgan:		We can't say that about pretty much every word we publish in the zine -- that two months later we look at it, and we’re, like, “Gosh did we say that?” or “We could have said that a little better” or “What was I thinking?”
Barbara:		So, did they convince you?
Saundra:		No, because it’s just that I’ve lived for a longer period of time. I’ve seen more things. Of course, some things are going to change. And, I’m still weary of this modern-day feminism. I think a lot of it’s kind of a joke. I have my own opinions about such things. I really haven’t found anyone who agrees with me now.
Corgan:		And, we’ve even changed. There’s some stuff that we said in response to what she said that I wouldn’t say now.
Barbara:		Like what?
Corgan:		There are some things about the goals of feminism that I would change now. I wouldn’t necessarily want to bring out the treatment of women in other countries. My feelings on violence have changed a little bit.
Barbara:		How have your views of the goals of feminism changed?
Jeanne:		I would say that two years ago, we would have been, like, more “work within the system.” Like, at one time, a woman president would have seemed like a good idea to me, but now any sort of president....
Corgan:		I thought that a woman president would be a better situation than a man doing it. And I think that has kind of changed. The idea that we should do everything through nonviolence -- blah, blah, blah.... That was stupid. You can’t live in a nonviolent world. It’s not possible. And to believe that I think was an assumption on my part. I can be like, “You shouldn’t use violence.” I don’t have to deal with that stuff in my life. So, why should I tell them how they should respond? They should respond how they feel they need to.
Barbara:		Would you agree that a lot of your thrust of your zine is toward social justice?
Corgan:		Jeanne and I write articles about those issues.
Saundra:		My articles are just basically about music, and about things I like to write about.
Barbara:		Which provides a nice balance to the zine.
Corgan:		Yeah, exactly. It’s got something for everyone. You can read a serious political article, and then turn the page and it’s funny, it’s a joke.
Barbara:		How would you describe Burnt Beauty?
Corgan:		A nice blend of humor and social issues. I think that I’ve progressed to the point where I can’t say that I wish I could have done things differently, but I’ve definitely progressed. It serves as a testament to how I was a year or a year and a half ago.
Barbara:		When you say progressed, what do you mean?
Corgan:		In the way we do things, and what I would consider print worthy and what I would bother spending time putting together. It’s nice because we’ve introduced a lot of people who don’t know what a zine is to it. I think the name Burnt Beauty itself has feminine connotations.... I think even some of the stuff we write about has feminine connotations. And I think that’s unfortunate, but true. I think also that a lot of people who read our zine, like I said before, are people who aren’t familiar with the zine scene or whatever, and they are just learning what a zine is. And I think that’s cool, too.
Barbara:		Is that your primary audience -- people who are just learning about zines?
Corgan:		I think so. You can only guess with things like that because people mail in orders, and you don’t know their background or what they look like or if they’re male or female. So it’s kind of hard to say. We just judge by the response that we get that most people are first-time zine people.
Barbara:		How do you see the issue of gender as a theme in Burnt Beauty? Saundra and I were talking about this on e-mail the other day.
Corgan:		I don’t see it as an issue, really. I think we primarily appeal to females, but I think that’s because our name is Burnt Beauty, and I think that discussion of feminism in the way I previously discussed it is maybe slightly alienating to males. I’ve learned from that. I’ve learned that’s not cool. It wasn’t something I’ve ever done intentionally, but I’ve learned from that. That it’s hard to explain. But I think that the way we would write about feminism, and the specific issues we would bring up, weren’t necessarily something that guys would, like, go, “Hey, wow.” A lot of men wouldn’t imagine that it would apply to them. They would think of feminism as a woman’s issue, and it’s not. That’s why I would like to write about it, and have a guy think, “I can relate to that.” I can get that much better in writing, like writing about feminism in context of when I’m in a class. Like when I was in my history class last year, the guys dominated discussion. And, when I’d mentioned that, they’d get super defensive about it, but at least it made them think. And, it’s better than me busting out with, “There is no abortion provider here....” Instead I said, “Hey, look at what you’re doing; look at how this is working right now. You’re in the situation and look at how it’s inherently sexist.” That is a better way to approach it, even if it does make them defensive. At least they are thinking about it.
Barbara:		Is that what you’re going to do with issue 4, too? Try to have a balance between the entertainment, humor, and social justice issues?
Jeanne:		Well, we kind of have goals for issue 4.
Saundra:		I don’t know what they are. I’m kind of out of the loop right now.
Jeanne:		I think that we’re probably taking less of an informative, political angle on articles, and more using politics in a less bookish way, less like a research paper. Kind of attempt to give it sort of an interesting angle. We want to write an article about how we believe that they should close down the Loop 101 for a day so that we can roller blade or use Skip Its or have ribbon dancers, and have people taking back the freeway day, skateboarding, whatever they want to do on the cement blocks. We think that would be cool.
Barbara:		What are Skip Its?
Corgan:		They’re these toys from when we were in 5th or 6th grade.
Saundra:		You put a ring around your ankle, and it’s got this long bow you swing out and skip over with your foot, and it counts the number of times you’ve done it.
Corgan:		So, we think that’s political
Barbara:		To close down the freeway for a day? Didn’t they do that when the freeway first opened?
Corgan:		Yeah, but not as cool. We want the whole thing open. I want to be able to zoom around those curves on my roller blades. It would be so cool. And Jeanne is going to write an article about how her government class made her an anarchist.
Jeanne:		In particular, the teacher.
Corgan:		I want to write about my sociology class last year, and what a thrill that was [sarcastic tone]. A little more personal.
Barbara:		What happened in your sociology class last year?
Corgan:		I was the lone voice of dissent in a class of people who thought that people who were homeless deserved to be homeless, and that everyone in jail beats their kids, and everyone in jail is supposed to be there, and there are more black people in jail not because they get arrested more often because cops are racist, but because they’re somehow biologically prone to crime. And the 9-11 business that was a joy bag in itself. The teacher was a very religious man, and I was often in conflict concerning that area.
Barbara:		Did he put forth his religious beliefs?
Corgan:		Oh, yeah. That was fun [sarcastic tone].
Barbara:		And your government class -- why did that make you an anarchist?
Jeanne:		It basically made me realize there was no hope for any sort of reform just because there are always going to be people like [the teacher] telling me what I can and cannot do with my life, and I don’t want to be a part of it.
Barbara:		So, what kind of style change are you trying to aim for now?
Corgan:		Not so much a school report as a fun thing to read. When it comes down to it, we don’t know all that much; if we knew a whole lot, the school report format would work for us, but we don’t.
Barbara:		How much have you done on issue 4 so far?
Corgan:		Sigh. We thought about ideas; we’ve got a lot of ideas written down, but we want to make a directional change. Saundra is already, like.... We’re trying to figure out where we want to be. Saundra’s stuff -- we always look back on and we still think it’s funny a year later. Whereas our stuff, we’re, like, “God. [Did we say that?]”

Barbara:		How do you go about putting together the illustrations and the layouts that get matched so well with the articles?
Saundra:		First, I always do the articles and then just come up with a background that is appropriate. Or if I can’t think of something that would be appropriate, I just do things like go through magazines with nice textures, things that have good contrast, and cut out things. I just use magazines I have lying around my house -- like I have a bunch of Discover magazines, a science magazine. I’ve got Spin magazine; I used to have a subscription. I use newspapers -- whatever I have, like Mexican newspapers or Chinese newspapers. I pick them up if I see them because I like to use them for zine backgrounds. Or colleges will send me brochures in the mail, and even if I don’t want to go to the college, I keep it because I know it will be good for zine background.
Corgan:		Basically, I do the same. I have a box of random stuff I’ve taken out of magazines and I just go through it and cut it apart. Sometimes I use the computer to put text with an image.
Barbara:		A lot of the backgrounds really fit with the article, like the “Beautiful Barbie” poem with the nutrition label, and the Barbie doll photo in the background.
Corgan:		Yeah, that was an article submitted to us so it was up to us to make the background. I think I was eating cereal while we were putting it together, and there was the nutrition label so we went though my recycling, and we had a picture of Barbie we got from Seventeen or something like that, and we just put that on there.
Barbara:		Do you take things off the Internet, too?
Saundra:		I don’t. Either I just use magazines or I’ll take digital pictures. My pictures of GG Allin and stuff were from the Internet, but not the backgrounds.
Corgan:		If you look hard, I’m sure you can find some from the Internet in the zine, but it’s not our preferred method.
Saundra:		We like to do it ourselves.
Barbara:		Did someone teach you how to do this, or did you just learn how on your own?
Corgan:		The first issue, we didn’t leave margins. We learned by doing, but no one really taught us.
Saundra:		Who’s going to teach you? No one, that’s who. No one knows.
Barbara:		Didn’t you tell me that someone taught you how to make a webpage?
Corgan:		Jeanne and I picked up some HTML to build the website when someone offered to post our website. It was very simple. But aside from the margin issue, I don’t think there have been too many issues.
Saundra:		I’ve learned that for backgrounds, you have to use things that will show up; you have to pick out things that have good contrast, that won’t be too light or too dark, so you can tell what they are. You can’t use pictures that are so bad because they won’t come out once you copy them. That’s what I’ve learned -- how things come out once they’ve been through the photocopier.
Barbara:		Did you have models to follow?
Saundra:		I didn’t have any. All the zines I saw were basically Corgan’s, and I flipped through them and gave them back. It’s something I’ve been able to rip off because I wanted to.
Barbara:		So you like the act of just cutting and pasting?
Saundra:		Yes. It’s very fun. I’d get together with friends to work on the zine, and just sit down and make backgrounds and glue things on. It’s a relaxing thing to do.

Barbara:		Is your website up and running still?
Corgan:		I think by a technicality, there is a page there, and it does tell you how to order issue 3. But it’s not the beauty that it once was.
Barbara:		Are you going to try to make your own webpage?
Corgan:		I just don’t have time. I don’t have the time or patience anymore. If we had something to say, there would be a webpage.
Barbara:		Have you gotten requests from people for issue 3 from the website?
Corgan:		I think we got a couple. But we don’t advertise with the site like we used to. We don’t get a lot of traffic through there.
Barbara:		Do you advertise in other zines?
Corgan:		If it’s offered.
Jeanne:		It hasn’t happened in a while, though.
Corgan:		When people ask me, I just e-mail them. I have the ad on my computer. Whether it ever gets in....
Barbara:		So, anyone who wants to advertise in yours can e-mail you and ask?
Corgan:		Right. Sometimes we swap ads. Sometimes we write them back and tell them we don’t know when the next issue is going to be out.

Barbara:		What have people who have read it said about your zine?
Saundra:		I’ve shown it to people who have never seen zines before at my school. They’ve said it’s a neat idea. They have also said it’s a chick zine because they’ve seen mine and they’re, like, “Burnt Beauty is a chick zine.” And a lot of the stuff they thought was kind of dumb. I showed them issue 2 because that was the only one I had. Some of the things they thought were ridiculous. Whether they liked it or not, they’ve been inspired by it.
Barbara:		Are these males or females you’ve shown it to?
Saundra:		Females.
Barbara:		Have you had any impact from the thought-provoking articles you’ve written that you’ve seen? Like the CoinTelPro article or the dialogues on feminist issues?
Jeanne:		I have. My little brother read the CoinTelPro article, and wanted to borrow some books -- which is kind of cool.
Corgan:		Yeah. People at school -- it’s generated discussion. A lot of people I go to school with don’t necessarily get it or understand it, so it’s nice to have people come up and debate with me. At least it starts discussion.
Saundra:		A lot of people I’ve shown it to have been completely ignorant about political things, and if they read an article like CoinTelPro they’re, like, “No way! The government does stuff like that? That’s awful!” Because they just know what they’ve seen on TV.

Barbara:		So, do you have any recommendations for websites or other zines?
Corgan:		I’ve recently been ordering a lot of zines. One of these, A Renegade’s Handbook to Love and Sabotage, was a good zine, I thought. A personal zine, yes, but she draws all the pictures in there, and she writes it all, and I just thought it was pretty amazing. I don’t know the name of the girl who writes it. Her first name is Ziara. I’ve heard the name of the zine thrown around a lot. At first, I took the attitude that it was probably an elitist, snobby zine because I heard the name so much; I wasn’t interested. I thought it was a zine girl thing, but I read it, and it was good. She is getting into mid-wifery and stuff, and I think that’s awesome. She writes from the standpoint of helping women and health care and stuff like that. I think it’s really cool. And she talks about protesting and stuff like that, her family, and her past. She draws so well and she draws all the pictures in it. I guess she’s pregnant now, and in the back she has a letter to her future kid, and it’s really cool. It’s just so well put together; it’s very beautiful. I really enjoy it. It’s probably one of my favorite zines.
Jeanne:		It’s been a really long time since I’ve gotten a zine, and not wanted to throw it away. I haven’t really been ordering them. I can’t afford it anymore.
Corgan:		I can’t afford any more, either. Zine orders take, like, four months to get to me. Four months ago I had the money, so I’m still getting some now.
Barbara:		You gave me a couple you had read, and I copied those. Were any of those ones you liked? I think Super Kitty was one.
Corgan:		Oh, Namaste.
Barbara:		“Namaste” is the name of the zine? Or is that the name of the person?
Corgan:		Well, she used to do a zine called Super Kitty. She did a couple issues of that, and then she did another zine and she renamed it Namaste. She’s done three issues of that.
Barbara:		What does Namaste mean?
Corgan:		I have no idea. She did a couple issues of Super Kitty and I guess she just decided to change the name. I don’t really know. But she’s been in contact with us. We traded an issue of Super Kitty for the first issue of Burnt Beauty and she ran an ad for us, I think in the back.
Saundra:		We ran an ad for her.
Corgan:		Yeah. We ran an ad for her, and then she reviewed Burnt Beauty in her first issue of Namaste. She does great zines. I really like them. She’s not zine snotty.
Saundra:		What is “zine snotty”?
Corgan:		I feel that sometimes the zine community can be very elitist, and she is not one of those people who makes me feel that way.
Saundra:		How so? I’ve never encountered that.
Corgan:		You’ve never encountered that because you’ve not been getting zines from the Internet. There’s certain people who have been doing zines for so long, they’ve become very cynical about people who have just started, and maybe people who don’t do the kind of zines they like. And there are some people that believe if you don’t write poetry and write about breaking up with your boyfriend, your zine is not worthy. And that’s cool, but I don’t think that way. And it seems like you have to be well known for them to even give you a chance.
Jeanne:		Right. And that’s not cool.
Corgan:		Fifty million people have to know what zine you do, and who you are before they’re, like, “Oh OK, I can talk to you.” And, that’s totally not what zining is about. For the most part, people aren’t like that in the zine community. Like, 90% of the people you meet are really cool, but there’s those annoying 10% who are elitist snobs. And she is not one of them. Her name is Christina. She was living in New York city for awhile.... She talks about hip hop and being black and things she’s learned. It was just cool. I enjoyed it.
Barbara:		So how do they give you the impression that if you are not well known enough they won’t give you a chance?
Corgan:		They are really clique-y. They ignore you.
Jeanne:		There’s a zinester e-mail list, and if you post stuff on there, they don’t respond unless you’re one of the regular posters.
Barbara:		So you can subscribe to that e-mail list?
Corgan:		Don’t.
Jeanne:		Yeah, it’s annoying.
Barbara:		What is the e-mail address?
Corgan:		It’s like zinesters@yahoogroups.com. It’s a Yahoo! Groups list. If you go to Yahoo! Groups and look up “zinesters list,” you’ll find it.
Barbara:		Are there any websites that you think of, too?
Jeanne:		Microcosm Publishing is good. It’s a vast resource, and there’s a lot of stuff there. If you’re just getting involved that would be a good website. And they’re very dependable. You know their distro is not going to shut down tomorrow.
Barbara:		Does it cost to register with their distro?
Corgan:		No, I don’t think so. You have to pay the postage to send your zines to them. They just carry a lot of books, and pins, and patches, and zines, and everything.
Saundra:		I’m on this thing called www.byofl.com, and it’s just people all over the world. They’ve got zines and record stores and crash spaces -- places that traveling people can stay for free. People would list if they are willing to let people stay at their homes for a couple of days if they are in a town and can’t pay for a motel. They’ve got everything you can imagine. I’ve gotten a couple of requests for my zine from that.
Barbara:		How interested are you in getting your zine disseminated? There is, for example, a zine that just reviews zines that I ran across.
Saundra:		I don’t want anyone reviewing the zine.
Saundra:		I really don’t care. I mean, basically, the only people I want to impress with the zine are the people I just personally hand it to.
Corgan:		I hope people enjoy it, but I don’t really care what people think about it. I mean, it’s like if our zine got a bad review, would I be heartbroken? No. But would I go out of my way to have someone trash on our zine? No.
Barbara:		Why are you thinking it would be a negative review?
Corgan:		Because people don’t know what to do with us. Like, we’ve gotten responses from distros that say our zine is “too varied” and there are too many people writing for it to be a noncompilation zine. And what that means, I can’t figure out.
Jeanne:		It’s just a nice way to say, “You suck!”
Barbara:		Who exactly said that?
Corgan:		I don’t remember. I realized we had craploads of issue 3 left, and I’m, like, “Let’s get rid of these.” So I wrote to a couple distros. They wanted to see our zine and it was rejected. A lot of them are personal zine distros, and they just don’t know what to do with us. They read it and they’re, like, “What is this?” because you’ve got the political articles, you’ve got the joke articles about the ugly people in music, and then you’ve got the poetry about someone who died, and then you’ve got the top 10 reasons why blah, blah, blah.... So someone reading it might say, “I love this” and “That’s stupid” and “I loved this.” So, overall, they’re just, like, “Huh?” That’s my theory anyway.

Barbara:		The last question: What implications would you say your zine has had, either the content or the format of what you do, for in-school instruction, if any?
Corgan:		Our writing is kind of anti-school writing. We already anti-five paragraph essay; we already anti-thesis statement. I think that I know that I write completely differently for school than I do for the zine.
Saundra:		You have to if you want to get a good grade on it.
Barbara:		But you say that your zine, issue 3, is more a report-like format.
Corgan:		To a certain extent. I still would never turn in things like I wrote on Bikini Island. I couldn’t turn that in like that. I would have to restructure it, and make sure everything about this goes in one paragraph, and everything about that goes in one paragraph, and have a thesis statement, and all that garbage. I do think that’s an effective way to write, the five-paragraph essay.
Barbara:		For what purpose?
Corgan:		You get your point across. If you have one idea, and you want to make a point about that idea, then yes -- the five-paragraph essay could be the way to go. But that’s just not how we write. When we write, we’re, like, “How do you like this?” “Oh yeah, I think I do. Put that in first thing.”
Jeanne:		Even when we’re writing in a report style, we can add things in that we would not add if we were turning it into a teacher.
Saundra:		I think my whole tone I use to write for the zine completely would not fly in something I had to do for school. Because I like to add things in like “motherfucker” [laughter]. I can’t do that for school.
Barbara:		But you have done subversive things and put in some of that biting wit and sarcasm.
Corgan:		Yeah, and then got busted. Remember, for the newspaper?
Saundra:		Yeah, for the newspaper, remember? She [the teacher] didn’t like that “Hitler Marries Jesus” article? We were studying newspapers freshman year, and we had an assignment to make our own newspaper. We made a zine, and we had some article about this and that; it was like, fake news and fake editorials and stuff like that -- just two pages folded over. And I copied it, and one of the articles was “Hitler Marries Jesus.” I thought it was funny, but [the teacher] didn’t think it was funny. She was, like, “I hate to do this but you can’t write that.”
Corgan:		We put duct tape over all the articles so people could just rip it off and then read what we really had to say.
Saundra:		I just stuck duct tape over it, and this one guy who was, like, a really big Christian peeled off the duct tape and got offended and blamed us. And I was, like, “Hey, you shouldn’t have taken off the tape.”
Corgan:		People destroyed the duct tape after we handed it out to the class. At least we feigned the attempt at censorship. God, that was genius. I laughed so hard.
Saundra:		The cover story was, like, “My brother takes over the world and becomes the world dictator.”
Corgan:		“The Redhead Master Race.” He had a whip.
Saundra:		He had the American flag and he had a whip, and he was talking about how he killed everyone who wasn’t a redhead, and he enslaved people or whatever. I had an interview with his best friend, and he said, “I’m lucky he spared my life because I have red hair, but he burned down my house and killed my family.”
Barbara:		So, there was an example of a zine in school that didn’t work.
Saundra:		No, because we couldn’t write what we wanted. We had to keep it school based and that is not something we like to do.
Corgan:		We are trying to do a zine, though, with our Gay/Straight Alliance [GSA] at school. We have to get it approved by the principal -- but even if we don’t, we’re doing it anyway. I didn’t just say that, though, because if it appears at school, I have no idea how it got there. Um. I think that’s because our sponsor has changed a bit toward that, and I think she’s OK with us doing it anyway, even if we don’t get permission. We’re going to do a GSA-sponsored zine about unity and diversity and acceptance, and things like that.
Barbara:		You would distribute it at school?
Corgan:		Yes, and it would be open to submissions from everyone. Like, we have someone who wants to write about the guy who got shot at a gas station here after 9/11 because he was an East Indian. She’s Indian; she’s from England, and she’s going to write about that.
Barbara:		So are you going to spearhead that zine?
Corgan:		I’m meting with the principal to talk about it, but then we’re all going to kind of do it, and a girl in the GSA, Janice, is in the Literary Club as well, and we think we’re going to co-edit it and do it together.
Barbara:		Is your principal aware of Burnt Beauty?
Saundra:		It’s not something you’d whip out in front of the principal. “Hey look at this; look what I do.”
Barbara:		So how receptive do you think the principal will be?
Corgan:		To the GSA zine? I think she’ll be OK. I’ve talked to people who know her better and they think she’ll be OK. I could ask her to write something for it, too; that would be cool. It could be too much to ask.
Saundra:		How are you going to distribute it? Are you just going to make copies and give them out?
Corgan:		I think we’re going to actually give them out and make sure everyone at school gets a copy.
Saundra:		Do you think you can do things at school they don’t have complete control over?
Corgan:		I’ve had teachers say stuff to me.
Saundra:		What, like, “You can’t pass this out because the school doesn’t have complete control over it?”
Corgan:		Yes. But, I’ve never had anyone higher than a teacher say anything to me about it.
Barbara:		What you’re basically saying is zines don’t belong in school? They wouldn’t fit in?
Saundra:		It’s the control thing. A zine is a thing the person [who does it] should control.
Barbara:		But maybe what could be done is to take the ethic of zine, which is “do it yourself,” and incorporate that into more of an issue of freedom -- letting people have more freedom in terms of what they write. So it’s like Saundra said -- the whole idea of zines is freedom, and school is about control. I was thinking, maybe we could take the ethic and incorporate that, and think of it in terms of more free choice, in terms of writing topics, writing genres, writing style.
Saundra:		That’s not what school’s about.
Corgan:		Yeah. I think there are individual teachers who would incorporate zine-likeness, for lack of a better word, into the curriculum. But school as a whole -- as a policy or as a curriculum, as a teaching method -- I don’t think it would work.
Saundra:		Maybe zines would be OK at school for the younger children -- anything they could conceive to write about would be fine. Like, that teacher who said the kids in his class could cut out pictures of Michael Jordan all day and write about basketball. There are people who would write about their dog and their cat, but the older kids would write about things that a lot of times school wouldn’t want them to write about. So for younger kids, zines might be OK in school for kindergarten through fourth graders.
Corgan:		Yeah. I don’t think fourth graders have the same desire to stick in the F word.
Saundra:		So, in your fourth-grade class, it’s OK to write a story about your rabbit and stick in little pictures. But for high school and middle school kids, I don’t think that would be an option. They’re going to want to do things school would not want them to do.
Corgan:		School has them so well trained that I think even high school people wouldn’t even try to write about things they weren’t supposed to write about.