Make/Shift (Issue 2)

Make/Shift magazine, published twice a year, is quite simply the most outstanding print-based feminist magazine in the United States. Printed on recycled paper, Make/Shift “creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art.” The difference between Make/Shift and other contemporary pro-feminist magazines is that at what others attempt, Make/Shift succeeds. Scores of resources are scattered throughout the issue (zines, publishers, online databases, calls for submissions) while the literary pieces themselves focus on issues such as women of color in the US, the international GLBTQ scene to feminist art and environmental justice (with a bilingual translation for Spanish and English).

Want more? That’s only the first few pages.

Deeply relevant and unusually engaging, Make/Shift wastes nothing as each and every page snugly wraps itself around some of the most contentious and underreported stories in contemporary feminist culture. It is indeed a difficult feat and rare occasion to encounter such intentional literary and artistic inclusivity while maintaining thematic significance and flow.

In my insatiable hunger for feminist and women-centered literature, Make/Shift satisfies and challenges with articles exploring the “Online Myth of ‘Every Woman,’” and the Pilipino Workers’ Center in “Justice Here, Justice There” while it ends with a crossword puzzle that quizzes on Asian Pacific American Feminisms. This 64 page piece of heaven delivers what most cannot: a multiracial, multiethnic, varied perspective of the evolving picture of feminism.

With over 40 contributing writers and illustrators as diverse as the fonts they write in, Make/Shift refreshingly reminds us to support such publications that contribute to the resistance of everyday and systematic oppression. As the online world negates a more perilous time for print journalism and independent media, Make/Shift is the best kept secret for US feminists asking themselves, “What’s happening out there?”

Make/Shift will tell you.

Review by Lisa Factora-Borchers