From left to right: Make/shift founders Jessica Hoffmann, Stephanie Abraham and Daria Yudacufski. Photo by Christopher Bazin.
The first issue of Make/shift magazine is now out and about. Founded and created by Jessica Hoffman, Stephanie Abraham and Daria Yudacufski, make/shift creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art.
Based in Venice, California, make/shift is produced by an editorial collective that is committed to anti-racist, transnational, and queer perspectives. According to the magazine's mission statement, "We know there’s exciting work being done in various spaces and forms by people seriously and playfully resisting and creating alternatives to systematic oppression. Make/shift exists to represent, participate in, critique, provoke, and inspire more of that good work."
The second issue of make/shift is in the works and will be released this fall. Here's Jessica, Stephanie and Daria...
What inspired you to decide to go forward and make a feminist magazine at this particular time? And how do you think your magazine differs from the other feminist magazines out there?
Daria Yudacufski: We were all working together on a local feminist magazine called LOUDmouth (which we all still either work on and/or support), and we realized there was a void in terms of national media that was at once fun, accessible, and smart but also really politicized and coming from a feminist perspective that saw feminism as being about more than just women and incorporated queer, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist perspectives.
Stephanie Abraham: One of the things that makes us different is that we’re interdisciplinary, so you’ll find politicized fiction and personal essays along with nonfiction articles and interviews, visual art and photography, and other forms.
Jessica Hoffman: There are other feminist media outlets doing great work offering feminist critiques of the dominant culture. We wanted to create a space to document and engage with feminist cultures and activism—to represent the exciting work we see contemporary feminists doing around the world in a feminist magazine that sees itself as part of broad movements for global social justice. Also, it felt really important to put activist work and artistic work together, in conversation. We know it’s a crazy time to start a print magazine, when so many great independent media outlets are folding for financial and infrastructural reasons (Clamor, The NewStandard, LiP), but at the same time that makes it feel that much more important to do this project—because there are fewer and fewer media outlets documenting the work of really system-challenging activists, artists, and thinkers.
What does the title, make/shift, stand for?
SA: For me it’s about making communities and shifting society.
DY: It’s about doin’ it with what you’ve got—you don’t need established, institutional structures or access to affect change. You can do it out of your living room with whatever you have available to you (and good friends).
JH: And I would add, you can’t make change in those institutions. You have to go outside of them to effect deep, structural change, and there’s a sort of makeshift, improvisational quality inherent in figuring out how to do it.
How did you three go about getting the magazine to where it is now—you’ve published your first issue and now you’re on to your second?
SA: A lot of sweat.
DY: And stress.
SA: We all work 30- to 60-hour work weeks and then we come home and get out our computers and work on make/shift.
DY: Because it’s a project that we’re dedicated to, we’ve made a commitment with our time, our money, and other resources to do what we need to do to make it happen. It’s been challenging, but it’s also been inspiring. It’s a lot about the process; we are trying to work together in a way that we can support each other and value each other’s ideas and efforts as well as our lives. We don’t just see each other as workers, we see each other as full human beings, and we need to respect all aspects of that.
JH: One of the concrete ways that manifests is cost-sharing, where we contribute different amounts and types of resources (money, time, skills) depending on what we each can do. But everyone is involved in some way in every aspect of making the magazine (funding, editorial, publishing, etc.).
SA: We don’t have a hierarchy. And I like knowing that I won’t make a decision without Daria and Jess because we make decisions collectively—I don’t have to do it alone. We work on the magazine individually all week long, but then we come together once a week, eat together, and we talk about everything—content, distro, PR, what needs to happen this week, how we can’t handle it all…
DY: But we do!
JH: I think that’s been one of the most special parts—that it is truly such a collective effort, not only among the three of us but also among an international community of people who contribute and inspire us.
What do you hope your magazine will ultimately inspire in readers?
JH: I want them to do feminism in their neighborhoods. I want them to make major change, together, in their own specific ways.
SA: I want them to be able to stand up and say, “You know? I can go for my dreams. It’s possible.�
DY: I want them to learn about stories that most other media outlets won’t represent and be inspired to go out and make their own stories.
What do you each hope to be the future of feminism?
DY: A feminism that’s inclusive, one that recognizes the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality.
JH: I’m already seeing the feminisms I want to see all over the place; it’s what we’re documenting in make/shift—it’s Ubuntu organizing a National Day of Truthtelling around sexual violence; it’s the awesomely smart and challenging work INCITE! has been doing for years; it’s Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (one member, Raquel Gutierrez, writes for make/shift) offering radical possibilities for queer Chicana masculinities through performance art; it’s our columnist Mattilda and everybody in her new anthology, Nobody Passes, critiquing assimilation in terms of gender and everything else. My hope for the future is that more people identify feminism with these kinds of projects, and that I no longer hear people calling neoliberal, centrist politics that don’t challenge white supremacy or capitalism at all “feminist� just because they address gender, or “women.�
DY: For me it’s about having all of those different things that Jess named come together. I want a feminism that allows all of those organizations and projects to coexist within a larger feminism that’s not so singular or single-issue oriented. I envision a feminism that makes space for all of these issues.
SA: I just keep thinking about the kids that I teach, and how I want to live in a world where boys and girls aren’t taught to view each other as opposites, so that girls can get messy on the playground and boys can break down and cry if they need to. The gender binary needs to be blurred. Feminism needs to be leading the way to that, and it needs to be doing it today. It’s hard for me to even think about tomorrow.
How do you three feel about presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton? Is she a feminist in your eyes? And what is your definition of a feminist?
SA: Geez, no. I feel like she’s a convenient distraction, that people are thrilled that there’s a woman candidate, as if that was the answer (laughs). I don’t think she’s a feminist. She’s just so mainstream!
JH: Totally. She’s supported this horrendous war, she offers nothing of substance to working people … The fact that she is a woman does not for me connect her at all to an intersectional feminism that is about radically challenging the oppressive systems we’re living under. She is no challenge to capitalism, neoliberal globalization, imperialism, militarism—I don’t know what could be feminist about her. It freaks me out when I hear people who identify as feminists asking questions like, “How do I weigh my feminist politics versus my other progressive politics regarding Hillary. On the one hand she supports the war, but on the other, she’s a woman.� To me that is a false and absurd equation. My feminism is not something separate from “other� progressive or radical or left politics.
DY: I definitely disagree with her politics and practices, which is too bad. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a woman or a person of color candidate whose politics I actually appreciated?
SA: But that would mean that we lived in a system that was actually representative.
DY: Of course. But as to whether Hillary’s a feminist, it’s not for me to say. She’s not my form of feminism, but there are multiple forms of feminism, so who am I to say whether or not she’s a feminist?
What can fans and new fans look forward to in the second issue of make/shift?
JH: Lots of stuff. We’ll have an interview with Andrea Richie from INCITE! about their brilliant new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, an e-symposium on feminist art by several young artists/activists, essays on the immigration raids…
SA: …a critique of trans documentaries in the form of a conversation between Dean Spade and Sam Feder, a moving poem by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha…and lots more is in progress. And our crossword puzzle!
In honor of Mother's Day, do you have any mothers--biological or spiritual--who you consider to be feminists? And why?
JH: Of course on Mother’s Day I think about my mom and all the other single moms out there who figure out how to make it work. And I’m thinking a lot lately about the working mothers who were separated from their kids in the recent immigration raids in New Bedford and elsewhere. I also want to, well, not essentialize motherhood. I see folks of lots of genders and generations caring for and nurturing each other, and I want to honor all of that.
SA: My mom—she would never call herself a feminist, but she taught me how to love. For me that’s a feminist act.
Is there anything you would like to add?
DY: Subscribe to make/shift! (please)
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I had the great fortune to be in a writing group with Jessica for several months, and also to hear Stephanie read part of her piece from the anthology "We Don't Need Another Wave," and I am so excited about make/shift. Thank you, to both of them, and Daria, for doing it. And thanks, Feministing, for profiling them.
I bought the first issue of make/shift. It was interesting. There was some really good fiction writing in it. The first issue seemed kind of hodge podge, in my opinion, but I think that it's going to be really interesting to see where they take this and to hopefully watch them grow and discover a voice.
Thanks for this great interview! I, for one, am excited to work with such brilliant, challenging and politicized editors...
What a wonderful interview! Thanks for promoting such a great group of feminist women! And don't forget that if you want this to work, y'all should buy a subscription of the magazine!
Good luck! Your website already looks way more professional than ours did when we started $pread! I'm going to subscribe.