This zine is written as two stories at once, which could be either slightly confusing or a unique style and way to multi-task. One story is about the past–a childhood in Michigan, written in italics, that describes the segregation of neighborhoods and dealing with race issues growing up in a small town. The other story is more present–about moving to New Orleans as a young, white kid possibly pretending to be poor, mingling with activism, and getting a taste of “not my battle” when the people he’s fighting for seemed apathetic. These two eras intersect as short segments that are mostly sincere, honest, interesting, and a little heart-breaking. Connections between the two defog in certain instances like how experiences of random violence in his youth gave the writer the conviction that no place is more dangerous than another.
Break Fast is written as the experience of the author and not in a way that assumes how other people may have felt and what was “really going on”. It presents feelings of displacement, frustration and real problems that maybe no one will ever be able to offer solutions to, but are important to discuss nonetheless.
This is a personal zine, and it’s written as a personal zine should be–with honesty and a little embarrassment–and very well written. Some technicalities like spelling errors may just make other zinesters feel better about their own work.