STORIES CARE FORGOT

by First Last

An anthology of zines from and about New Orleans. For years the punk and zine community has thrived, producing beautifully rendered volumes of stories and artwork. Over the years these authors have poured their hearts out and shared their thoughts and opinions on music, politics, bikes, gentrification, gender,class and, of course, the city itself. Reprinted here in their original format are selections from over a dozen zines Chainbreaker, Nosedive, Crude Noise, Rocket Queen, Emergency, I Hate This Part of Texas and Chihuahua and Pitbull, as well as author introductions about their experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina. Many of the originals have been lost or destroyed and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this book serves not only as a preservation of writing and artwork, but also as an attempt to aid in rebuilding the city that inspired and shaped this body of work. Proceeds from Stories Care Forgot will be split amongst grassroots New Orleans groups.

Paperback

First published March 1, 2006

Reviews

[Tinea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not expect this anthology to be this good. It's a collection of excerpts from zines that came out of New Orleans before and just after Hurricane Katrina. Like the best mixtapes, zines are whole entities. They don't always work well as singles. And sure enough, the few stories I read by randomly opening the book were good enough stories alone, but they didn't sit well together. They needed their context.

Luckily for posterity, the editor, Ethan, is a master zinester. Thank you!! Ethan manages to cut and paste a narrative flow from a mixed up collection of punk adventures, love stories, political analysis, rambling essays, and miscellanea like show flyers. All the original handwriting, formatting, and drawings are lovingly photocopied into the pages of the book. Ethan ties the pieces together with short introductions to each themed section that illustrate what makes the stories contained therein uniquely New Orleans.

Taken as a whole, Stories Care Forgot crafts its own story, a vibrant, tangible picture of a punk scene in New Orleans that is explosive, artistic, and alive. Struggle to survive is a major theme in a lot of the selections, but most temper the struggle with some kind of celebration. Shit jobs like bike delivery turn into the ultimate alleycat race. Awful living conditions in falling apart houses mean cheap rent. Everywhere there is some kind of lack, there is creation. This book made me so psyched for DIY creativity: bands and zines and puppets and bikes and gardens and banners, whatever that wild-eyed coffee-driven late-night productivity could make for anyone but a boss.

The middle section, "Neighborhoods," collects different zinesters' attempts to deal with gentrification, the role of white activists and squatters who live in New Orleans' poor, mostly African American neighborhoods (describing, it seems, the majority if not all of the zinesters contained in this book). They write about surviving the constant robberies, muggings, and fights their city is famous for. They write too about the violence of poverty and racism that the city exerts on its people, and a little (maybe too little) about resistance. Like most writings on gentrification, especially by those white people living on its leading edges, there are more questions than answers here. But the urgency of these zines out of NOLA is particular to that city. With the displacement of whole neighborhoods and the demolitions of subsidized housing that have escalated after the hurricane, the situation has only gotten more dire.

The zine scene in NOLA was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Zinesters were displaced, neighborhoods flooded and abandoned, everything, all that-- and many of the zines themselves were destroyed. Ethan, the editor, explains in his introduction that many of the stories excerpted in this book are reprints of reprints since the original zines were eaten up by flood and mold. Stories Care Forgot is a bittersweet collection, then. It saved so many gems. But it stands as a reminder of all the stories that didn't survived the storm.

[Lesley · Rating 1 out of 5]

i really dig the idea of a collection of zines, but this one was kind of disappointing. i mean i guess i should have expected that most of the zines would be from punk/d.i.y./anarchists who live in new orleans. i think even more so then being bored with the stories of dumpster diving and biking, most all of the folks whom wrote the zines were not from new orleans originally, who moved from elsewhere or hadn't lived there long. so i don't know it felt at times like kind of an outsider perspective. i guess i didn't really often feel the love for the city.
and i don't know, of all the stories around hurricane katrina, i guess i just feel luke warm around a book that seems to collect only a certain group of people's stories.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was so familiar and bright. bikes and punks and drinking and shit jobs and silliness. i loved reading about new orleans 20 years ago. i loved the handwriting and the bad drawings and the fliers and all the images that were copied too dark. i loved the typewriters. i wonder where all of these people are now. i loved the lists, especially of what people bought via bike delivery from corner stores. i love that the roads have always been trash.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I knew more about the production if this glorious collection of sketches and stories and comics. I discovered this at a used bookstore in Colorado. They would receive large shipments of books from their sister stores in other states. And one of the stores was a New Orleans located store! Loved this find! And you will too if you're obsessed with the Big Easy like me. 😄

[Ciara · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an anthology of zines made by zinesters living in new orleans. most of the stories in the zine are about new orleans in some way or another (& you will understand how that works if you have ever read a zine written by a new orleans zinester--even before hurricane katrina, the city was as big a character in all those zines as the zinesters' friends & stuff were). it was released after hurricane katrina, as a kind of memorial to the city, & to many of the zine flats & stuff that were lost to flooding. the weird thing is that i have historically quite like the vast majority of zines that have come out of new orleans over the years--"keep loving keep fighting," "chainbreaker," "chihuahua vs. pitbull," "nosedive," etc. there is a lot of zine talent in that city. so this anthology is really strong (unlike many other city-specific zine anthologies i have seen--most notably, the agonizingly hit & miss "d.i.y. in portland"). i loved it! & not just because i got a free copy! check it out!

[HeavyReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was put together post Hurricane Katrina as a fundraiser and as a way to remember the zine/punk/DIY culture in the town pre-Katrina.

Several of my friends from my days in NOLA have pieces in this book, and my name is actually mentioned in a piece from Skot's zine Public Enema (or maybe the piece if from The Gentrification Reader.

This book makes me cry for what I miss about my time in New Orleans, but I am happy for the memories too.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of bikes, bike lovers, underground half-assed full-throttle spirit, addictions, celebrations, and itchy love triangles... exhausting with trivia, rhetorical questions, YAY!s and Cops suck. This kind of zineish voice usually just rubs me all the wrong ways, but in this context I can stand it, because the massive losses in New Orleans frame any kind of accounting as a treasure, a memory safe from the flood.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

takes me back to nola

[brass · Rating 5 out of 5]

please buy and read this book.

[Deirdre Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing.

[Brendan]

Notable:
"Gentrification in the Irish Channel" - Skot! (Gentrification Reader)
"You Too Can Be a Tourist Attraction" - Janet (Rocket Queen #2)
"... Are YOU the Mechanic?" - Shelley L. Jackson (Chainbreaker #3)
"I Took the First Job That Came My Way..." - Natalia Beylis (Sweet Olive #3)

It is said that the eskimos (sic) have 114 words for ice but not a single word for love.
- Dave Meesters, "Stinky North, Dirty South"

The race line, it's drawn hard in New Orleans, and being a white kid and just wishing it weren't that way doesn't make it go away.
- Ethan Clark, "Neighborhoods"

this neighborhood is the oldest African-American neighborhood in the country. it was, at first, a swamp, then a plantation, and then became the black area of town.
- Skot!, "Treme"

There is a full moon this weekend. I want to reach towards it, i want to hold something huge and beautiful. I want to scream.
- Hope Amico, "Barfly"