Zine: A Reflection of Mass Incarceration in the United States is a mass accumulation of visual art, poems, stories, and other documents produced by Lick-Wilmerding’s Student Life Program Assistant Marley Pierce’s Public Purpose Class, Intro to the Prison Industrial Complex class.
“The purpose of the zine is to shed light on different aspects of the Prison Industrial Complex, its historical context, its real world impacts today, and to showcase the personal experiences and opinions of students in the class,” reads Zine’s introductory paragraph. “We hope you read this zine with some norms in mind: respect multiple perspectives, take note of your personal reaction and take care of yourself if necessary, and understand that the writers’ and artists’ ideas are messy and complex.”
The class investigated the history and function of prisons in American society. The writers-artists-members of the class include Macy Amos, Tuvya Bergson-Michelson, Harry Bernholz, Joshua Caldwell, Kiera Collins, Sophie Hochman, Jey Kissel, Oona Fitzpatrick, Kelby Kramer, Alana Leventhal, Sebastian Medrano, Sofia Sanchez, Maiyio Taylor-Jackson, Sophia Yin, Jackie Young, and of course Marley Pierce.
The beauty of these submissions lies in their messy honesty, their collection of facts, truths, and emotion – their insistence that the reader pays attention. The work explores and intertwines police brutality, race, activism, oppression, identity, rates of incarceration, disparities in incarceration. Loss. Despair. Anger. Hope. The string that ties all of these topics together is justice, loosely binding anything and everything under the umbrella of the prison system. The works are often less than a page but provoke profound thought and discussion.
The variety includes drawings, comics, diagrams, poems, stories and even annotated passages assembled to represent a multitude of perspectives on the prison complex. Yet each piece takes a divergent path to present a new outlook to the reader. “You might feel outraged by the injustice of the system, or despondent at its cruelty,” reads Zine’s conclusion. “You might connect with the material on an intellectual, rather than emotional, level. However you feel, we urge you to react with your heart and move towards taking action.”
Besides the physical copies available in the Center, Zine: A Reflection of Mass Incarceration in the United States is also available in full on the Paper Tiger Online. Read it here.
