Welcome to snaggletooth’s online zine! We’re so glad that you’re here. We are really proud of the work featured in this issue, and we are honored to serve as a home for so many talented student artists.
This past year has been unlike any other. The pandemic has forced us to distance ourselves from our loved ones and each other. Many of us have felt the loss of a life during this year; all of us have felt the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. The disproportionate number of COVID-related deaths among BIPOC populations, the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes, and the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer and fall have shined a critical spotlight on the historical & ongoing racism, colonialism, imperialism, and violence that shape and threaten the lives of so many. The reality that police officers across the U.S. murdered several other children and people of color in the same week that George Floyd’s killer was convicted makes it brutally clear that total abolition at the local, national, and global scale is the only imaginable future in which justice is realized.
We had originally planned to release an issue in June of 2020, but decided to delay our publication date as we did not want our release of virtual content to detract from the vital discourse & action that was taking place online and in the streets. We have taken the opportunity to spend the past year rethinking what snaggletooth is and what it can do. Sticking with our plan to release a virtual issue during a pandemic, we’ve used this platform to elevate the magazine, including audio and video content that would have otherwise been excluded. We hope to continue to expand in this way as snaggletooth grows deeper roots in the Bates and Lewiston community. In attempts to shrink the distance between us, moving away from estrangement and towards community, we’ve sought to craft our 2021 issue as a virtual space to celebrate art and pool intellectual, creative, and financial resources to imagine a more resilient community. With this in mind, we are requesting a suggested donation of $5 - $15 dollars for this zine to one of the three organizations listed below. We have selected the following funds for their roles in promoting justice, creativity, and physical, social, and emotional resilience in both our local community and the wider arts community.
LA Arts: The arts agency for the cities of Lewiston and Auburn. They coordinate arts events, opportunities, partnerships, local economies, and community spaces. Support them here.
The Somali Bantu Community Association: An immigrant services organization providing important transitional, advocacy, food access, and healing services to refugees and other new Mainers. Support them here.
Shade Literary Arts: A literary organization for queer writers of color. In addition to publishing The Shade Journal, Shade Literary Arts distributes funds to queer writers of color across the world. Support them here.
By reading each other’s words, sharing in each other’s art, and participating in mutual aid, we can hopefully make a commitment to mutual survival, creativity, and liberation. 2020 and 2021 have been inexplicably devastating and world-changing for so many people. We hope that the art in this zine can provide you with some much-needed hope, joy, and clarity.
Best,
Anna Maheu & Christina Wang
editors-in-chief of snaggletooth magazine