Future Gen Archive #2
"The Child", November 1990
Welcome to my second week writing regularly! Today we continue with The Future Generation (TFG), issue 2. I am quite excited to dig in.
Let’s start however, with a quick review of the first issue. TFG #1 “Physical” was 71 pages of personal writing, collage, and a great amount of zeroxing excerpts and sections from books. The cover included a quote from the anarchist Emma Goldman, and a sculpture (which I need to track down its source, I remember a whole book) whose title was “woman with child thought”
Inside the topics covered were: the mind/body split under capitalism, classism, a tiny bit addressing enslaved caregivers and mothering; large sections about birth and midwives clipped from “Immaculate Deception” by Suzanne Arms (1975) and Birth Without Violence by Frederick LeBoyer (1974) . Pages of college and my reflection on gender, the whole “boy or girl” thing (which I found ridiculous and abusive at the time, as a baby is a baby, not a boy or girl whole category decided because of the shape of its concealed genitals). Sections on Hopi childrearing from Robert Coles, Children of Crisis series (a huge influence on me) of discussing treatment of the land. As well as lots of images from New Alchemy Institute of city roof top gardens, street lakes, and treatment and compost. (I did go and google New Alchemy some since I never heard of them again and felt the technology suggested was amazing.)
I was also surprised to see a quote about emotional labor from Barbara Rothman in a book, Recreating Motherhood, that came out in January 1990, three months before my first zine. (I was surprised to see that there because it seems such a current hot topic but apparently the term “emotional labor” was coined by Arlie in this book below 1983). While I don’t remember using that phrase, I very much remember how this hit me at the time and zeroxing these excerpts.
“In a book called ‘The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling’, Arlie Russell Hochschild describes the work of flight attendants. In the work that they do, “processing people, the product is a state of mind.’ They are paid for what she calls emotional labor.”
So, anyway, issue one was ALOT. Now in TFG, with issue two, we turn from the more macro cultural/environmental/systematic influences of empowerment or oppression, to focus to the center of it all: The child.
The Future Generation # 2, November 1990. Published in Baltimore.
The cover is a photo of our west coast kid friend, Thor, and a misspelled quote from Alice Miller: “Honor the Children so they can honor themselves and others.”
Ok, flipping through issue 2, at 40 pages. I am still a bit overwhelmed with all the information. Here we are talking about Kid Lib, and bringing anthropologist into it still, Robert Coles again with his first book in the Children of Crisis series, Volume 1: A Study of Courage and Fear (1967) and some Margaret Mead quotes . I love them both so much. And newspaper clippings about abuse, and poverty again. Class is always making its way into my zine even if I didn’t often name it. (or maybe I did. I talked about poverty.) I was really trying to distill and share a lot of resources and different ways of being I did not see at the time around me.
As I searched I shared the info I found, and asked others to write me, to share anything at all as well. I thanked my mother for babysitting my daughter, In Pensyvania, so I could write this. And talked of a possible home school collective in my future, as well as wanting to write on anarchism next.
Looking in my zine book anthology, I see I only used 3 and a half pages from issue #2
I used my first intro sentences but not the rest of it:
“Because it’s damn hard raising children in the deranged world of today. If you are young and want to network, get a penpal, or are in custody- write YOUTH LIB, Syndicate des Eleves, 2035 Boulevard. St-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec its great and more about youth lib (not parents) than this zine.
Another definite slant of this project is thinking about the mysteries of human behavior, kinda education and stuff. Right now I’m putting it out myself. I want to write a paper on Anarchy and Children soon but after I’m done - It will change to lots of people - hopefully. That means you! Also in possible future is a home school collective. Xxxooo China”
So I was curious what Youth Lib/Syndeciate of the Eleves was about. All I could find in googling, was mention of them printing this great chapbook, As Soon as You're Born They Make You Feel Small a classic, I remember. Apparently it was published in 1986, two years before my daughter was born.
The first connection I found googling was in this booklist:
Ayotte, Wendy, As Soon as You're Born They Make You Feel Small: Self-Determination for Children. (Syndicat des Eleves; written in the 80s; a small pamphlet.) The New Left spawned a ‘Little People’s Liberation Movement’, one of the few New Left initiatives to die in the crib. A small current persisted for a while though. There was a Youth Liberation Press in Ann Arbor. They published FPS: A Magazine of Young People’s Liberation, which lasted at least up until 1978, perhaps longer.
I really like the way citations are done in this list. Its also an old list, and I feel that books were incredibly important to us during this time, as information seekers. I also am a fan of creating your own lists and documenting what you know of history, which reminds me of this classic on mama zine history I put together in 2005.
I promised myself today I would go easier on myself in writing todays column. To not let professionalism silence, or EXHAUST, me. Sometimes I do want to get editing, take days on the writing, but some days I’m just going to throw it up there :) and hope you can get something out of it.
Today’s experience in the archives makes me want to be able to scan these old zines completely, to share as an archive in that way. It was suggested at the Wedding Cake House residency that I need an intern to help me with scanning, and I do! I definitely need more support and thats why I’m using this platform to express myself and ask for support as well.
As always its a work in progress. Thank you for coming along in this journey with me!
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P.S. Topics quoted not in my booklist (shared in The Future Gen Archive #1) are:
William Burroughs
Margarette Mead (god I love her);
an incredible essay “Childhood Tears to Adults Fears” by C. Schuster, that I don’t know where it came from or who the writer is and can’t find in googling. Maybe it was from another indie publishing source.
Quotes from “the Fussy Baby” by W.Sears, Le Leche League
Small Futures by Richard Delone