Girlhood Zine Workshop
2025
Kennedi Johnson from the Visiting Room Project, a community archive in New Orleans, LA, and I conducted a zine workshop with formerly incarcerated narrators (including women and one trans masculine person) to reflect on girlhood as a tool for identity-construction outside of their experience with incarceration. The planning process was participatory: Kennedi and I held Zoom-meetings to introduce participants to zines and ask what narrators wanted from the workshop.
Drawing from Carment Winant's book A Brand New End and The Clothesline Project, I created a workshop plan to reflect on experiences of girlhood, considering what one wants to take with them – focusing on joy, play, and self-identity – and what they want to leave behind. Participants created t-shirts and zines, which were turned into a book, Girlhood Arrested.
The workshop and zines produced were featured in an offsite panel at the American Anthropological Association Conference 2025, Memory Work at the John Thompson Legacy Center, which was co-sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of North America and the association of Black Anthropologists. The workshop planning, travel, and reflection was supported by the Maharam Fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Part 1: Zines
2 Hours
We will be making standard booklet zines using 8.5x11" letter-sized paper. Start with 2-4 pieces of copy paper and fold in half to create a booklet. You may want to brainstorm some ideas in your notebook first, or sketch out ideas in pencil before fully committing with more permanent mark-making.
Consider some of these questions to prompt writing, notes, or illustrations for your zine. Feel free to make your own questions or prompts, too.
- What was your favorite color, food, TV show, book, or movie?
- Did you have a favorite item, toy, or character?
- Were there particular crafts or activities you liked doing?
- What's a memory or place where you felt most like yourself? Are you drawn to similar place today?
- What are qualities you admire about yourself from childhood? Do you still see them in yourself today?
- How would you define your girlhood/childhood in your own terms? Not what others have to say.
- How does the disconnect between how you viewed yourself and how others viewed you feel? Was there a disconnect? Did you feel seen?
- What parts did you feel you had to change or hide about yourself?
- Does criminalization play a part in how you understand childhood?
- What would your younger self be proud of you for now? What are you proud of your younger self for?
- How do you want to show up for other young people based on your own experience?
- What would your life have looked like if you could define yourself completely as a kid?
Part 2: Shirts
1.5 Hours
Take a moment to jot down some ideas from your zine.
- What were some themes or big ideas about girlhood in your zine – What did you reflect on most?
- What were some of the strengths and positive aspects about yourself that came up?
- What about things you want to leave behind, or advice you have for others?
Girlhood is used as a stand-in for a wide variety of experiences. Many queer and trans people experience girlhood as an identity that was forced on to them. Participants were encouraged to freely ignore "girlhood" and talk about childhood in any way that makes sense to them.
