August 13, 2009
Osa Atoe, 30, believes strongly in punk rock’s do-it-yourself ethos.
That’s how the Virginia-based schoolteacher and musician came to publish Shotgun Seamstress, a zine dedicated to highlighting Black punk.
“Nobody told me that I’m a writer,” Atoe says. “I feel like punk was a powerful tool for me as a Black woman, and I want to extend that to other Black people.”
Atoe was inspired by how punk culture encourages people with limited resources and formal training to create everything from bands to zines and clothing. Ultimately, she saw the potential for communities of color to use this same approach in building more expansive definitions of race that leave room for Black misfits, geeks and queers.
Touring the country with her band, New Bloods, Atoe envisioned starting a zine focused on people of color in the punk scene. But it wasn’t until a brief stint in Oakland, California in 2005 that she met a supportive community of punks of color who had found each other after being isolated in white punk scenes across the country.
Pretty soon, Atoe realized she had an eager audience for her writing, and, while on tour, she distributed the zine by hand and sold it in independent book stores across the country.
The zine—like punk itself—is about challenging norms. “White people play reggae, white people play rock, white people rap,” Atoe says. “Why is it that Black people have these cultural confines?”
For more about Atoe’s work, visit myspace.com/shotgunseamstress.
