With June Jordan’s voice lodged inside my head, I traverse history and the here and now as queer immigrant scholar/teacher of color via a transnational critical optic, alert to the ravages of power. I write using experimental form to break the hold of dominant (white) rhetorical traditions that are failing us, intertwining my words with Jordan’s words amidst ongoing assaults on our lives/imaginations.

We discuss how studying and creating zines in our composition classes allows our students to negotiate and explore the complexities of writing without the compulsions of many of the politically problematic commonplaces of composition pedagogy. We use zines to examine the unique ways in which their rhetorical devices address conflicts around questions of audience and diversity, as well as the particular questions that the zines raise about the politics of persuasion, our own writing practices, writing strategies that the zines suggest to us, and the construction of alternative communities.