Tea with Marylea (On being a trans, anarchist icon of independent publishing)
Natalia Dembowska
Serendipity is defined as “unplanned fortunate discovery”: finding something of value by chance. Maybe it’s a little cliché, but I don’t know a better word to describe meeting Marylea. We both happened to be in a group chat of some underground zine and one day things got heated. Some people got offended by the use of the word “intifada” on Marylea’s poster for a fund-raiser she organized to support Palestine in its fight against the ongoing genocide. I went hard backing her up and proceeded to dramatically quit that group chat. She texted me, showering me in gratitude, and bim, bam, boom, the alliance was ignited.
Born in Marietta, the white suburb of Atlanta, Georgia (originally Creek and Cherokee Native American territory, gradually ceded between 1821 and 1835), Marylea is a quarter Korean, quarter American and half French: “My father is both from Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritage. I've never been to Korea and I don't look Asian, but I know some words, recipes and cultural tokens my grandma has shared with us. I've never had a bat mitzvah or done passover but my Jewish family members have also taught me a lot about the Shoah and the history of oppression that my ancestors both dealt with and resisted. When I think of the history of Asian and Jewish persecution that has directly impacted my family, I definitely want to represent these identities and embody them with pride. But do I have the right to do so? To identify with my family’s heritage without a direct connection to it? It's all complicated and messy. Humor helps me deal with it in a more light hearted way”.
She says she spent the first eight years of her life “celebrating the Columbus Day” like all the other American kids, spending her time at the playground on “racist games like Cowboys & Indians, looking for the token kid of color to play the Indian of course”: the usual for a white (passing) American upbringing. Isolated in a suburb with zero notion of counter culture and no register of queerness whatsoever, she lived the coming-of-age story that so many kids in the US share: “I grew up in a Christian household in the bible belt. That's an area where you can't escape Christianity. Even my childhood basketball trophy has a bible quote on it. We used to pray before every game. As a child, I was forced to believe in God, which I did for a bit, praying to the Christian heaven in hopes that it was treating my dead grandfather well. I never really questioned it till my early teens. Thirteen to eighteen was what I would call my annoying atheist years. My father, despite his Jewish background, was always an atheist so he was the only one exempt from church on Sundays until I was at least fifteen years old”.
Born in Marietta, the white suburb of Atlanta, Georgia (originally Creek and Cherokee Native American territory, gradually ceded between 1821 and 1835), Marylea is a quarter Korean, quarter American and half French: “My father is both from Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritage. I've never been to Korea and I don't look Asian, but I know some words, recipes and cultural tokens my grandma has shared with us. I've never had a bat mitzvah or done passover but my Jewish family members have also taught me a lot about the Shoah and the history of oppression that my ancestors both dealt with and resisted. When I think of the history of Asian and Jewish persecution that has directly impacted my family, I definitely want to represent these identities and embody them with pride. But do I have the right to do so? To identify with my family’s heritage without a direct connection to it? It's all complicated and messy. Humor helps me deal with it in a more light hearted way”.
She says she spent the first eight years of her life “celebrating the Columbus Day” like all the other American kids, spending her time at the playground on “racist games like Cowboys & Indians, looking for the token kid of color to play the Indian of course”: the usual for a white (passing) American upbringing. Isolated in a suburb with zero notion of counter culture and no register of queerness whatsoever, she lived the coming-of-age story that so many kids in the US share: “I grew up in a Christian household in the bible belt. That's an area where you can't escape Christianity. Even my childhood basketball trophy has a bible quote on it. We used to pray before every game. As a child, I was forced to believe in God, which I did for a bit, praying to the Christian heaven in hopes that it was treating my dead grandfather well. I never really questioned it till my early teens. Thirteen to eighteen was what I would call my annoying atheist years. My father, despite his Jewish background, was always an atheist so he was the only one exempt from church on Sundays until I was at least fifteen years old”.
At the age of eight, Marylea moved to Paris, where she went to two different “equally expensive international schools, to be bullied by students and teachers alike”. Throw in some internalised misogyny, toxic family heritage, and pressure to show up in a conditioned male role, and you got yourself an angsty, problematic teen: “It wasn’t pretty. In France, islamophobia is so pervasive. When I was a young atheist I found myself talking down to people of any faith, arguing against Muslim women about why the hijab should be banned in public. Yikes. I considered myself a science “no-fun” kind of girlie, I guess. I'm still not a fan of rigid hierarchies of religious institutions (often rooted in colonialism), but I've definitely changed the way I view the faith of individual people. This unraveled as I continued to write and think about how it serves as a way to tap into magic. I believe in the power of people creating stories that truly affect and inspire them. I love that we can feel the presence of things that can't be explained and can only be understood through magic. I don't pray or follow a specific God but I now view writing as something similar to prayer: a spell that gets casted, transforming symbols into a series of incredible stories”.
With so much cis, heteronormative representation thrown from every angle, Marylea never felt like she had the opportunity to find inspiration on her own becoming, oblivious to trans culture. The only exposure to trans people being street workers, sadly so frowned upon in society, it was definitely not easy for her to find role models: “It has been many years since I was the lonely little loser with a silver spoon in her mouth, who treated women like shit, got bullied, did badly in school and just generally sucked. It’s a part of my life I cringe at very openly because I want people to know that it’s never too late to confront the shit you’ve been raised with. It’s never too late to change the way you interact with this world and finding that chosen family who can hold you accountable for your actions. Working towards a world where all the power is handed to all the people, where we all live with dignity - it’s possible, it’s never too late”. She decided to escape the rigidness of the French system. Some people need to gather themselves to take a leap of faith, but Marylea gathered a bunch of friends, and just like that, a group of queer kids moved to the Netherlands, chasing the bohemian queer fantasy she craved to experience.
Messy beginnings: computer science in Delft. Quitting that to study literature in Amsterdam. “This Side of Paradise” in her backpack, she dreamt of being surrounded by all sorts of artists, stimulated by the city and its international community, pushed to constantly create, and brainstorm exciting ideas just by being there: “Instead I ended up smoking weed on a daily basis while clubbing every weekend under the influence of almost every drug imaginable for like two years straight. I barely wrote anything and even after joining a student magazine I craved to find this magical pool of creatives with whom I’d reflect on the craft of creating art”. Reading Patti Smith, she started to realise that wanting to create is not enough: “I had to start making and showcasing. By virtue of being out there I would attract people who are also into art. I didn’t like the rigid structure of the student magazine, and once late at night, after watching a terrible movie and ranting about it for hours with my girlfriend at the time, we decided to create our own magazine”.
And so Loose Dog Magazine was created, a combination of everything the two wanted out of their artistic endeavours - writing, printing, community building, cultural events. From the very beginning Marylea made the point to put what she’s learned from her anarchist meetings into practice: “That’s what’s been so important to me. Cultivating that chosen family and meeting trans siblings who take care of each other and give each other the space to be themselves, distributing the art we make in our collective without seeking out profit. Or trying to call myself some pompous title that negates the horizontal structure we strive for. Uniting with radical collectives, squatting a building I live in with wonderful comrades, fighting for the changes we know are possible. We have zines for free living, free Palestine, freedom from the gender binary, and all of it free for the taking. It’s always together and it’s wonderful!”.
Marylea cares deeply about independent publishing. She saves up money to donate to stores and individuals who “care more about the messages they’re spreading than any kind of profit margin”. That’s what has soul, character - the authenticity needed for a creation to be real, the intention behind the action: “You see people do things for passion and you read the words of people who speak with their hearts on their sleeves, nothing to lose. It’s an endless treasure trove of queer and radical texts to pick up for free if you can’t afford to donate. Literature for the masses instead of literature for the supposed normalized majority”.
The publishing industry is not only expensive, but largely outdated. The mainstream productions come with a heavy price tag, with arts & culture magazines being sold at twenty to fifty dollars per copy. The expectation is always to make as much money as possible, expecting to make a fortune off of the backs of artists involved: “It’s a capitalist game: who can strike gold constantly catering to whatever the market considers trendy, whatever the ‘majority’ might desire. I can’t tell you how many fancy schmancy publishing houses I’ve stolen from. Why would I pay these crazy price tags for that money to get siphoned by greedy capitalists? We oughta fight for a world where everything is independently published, where you don’t need copyright to secure a life without struggling for basic necessities. Trans and queer people are barely represented, let alone considered and cared for unless we do that for each other. Unless we make our voices heard. I love that existence outside of the normal though! I love that we’re queer and I’m proud to be outside of the toxic normality. I don’t want to fight to get into a capitalist system”.
Popularity is powerful. It can help to sensitize society, educate us, make us understand the bigger picture. But do we need it? Do we need to seek to make everything popular, successful, wide-spread? “I don’t know. We just need dignity. Fuck all the rest. I’m not asking anybody to be popular. I’m not asking anybody for my rights. I’m gonna keep on publishing within my community and defend us against the people who try to tear us apart, kick us down. Cause guess what? We queers bash back and we create beautiful art with each elegant kick to the capitalist face”.
I asked Marylea what role artists play in civil action: “We make banners, we chant, we publish zines, we give speeches: just a handful of examples of revolutionary art. Civil action will always have art because it's such a powerful tool for people who want to express themselves, and civil action within itself is definitely a form of expression as well. Art can bring us together and make us aware of what we actually fight against. Art asks us to tap into our souls and find the vulnerability to share that with the world. Art is a way for life to manifest. If you want to hear it you have to resist the consumerism as a capitalist destruction of creativity. You gotta hold onto hope and help each other imagine alternatives. Ways of being that bring back what has been surpressed and nurtures what has yet to come. I turn to the history of Haitian rebels who did rituals before breaking the chains of slavery and colonization. I turn to the present feminist revival of Kurdish culture in Rojava and the critical lens that the Zapatistas use to live with dignity and dig up their Mayan roots. So many cultures have never lost the will to fight as they struggle to maintain a loving embrace with our planet and its people. That too is necessary for civil action”.
Marylea lives in a squatted building in Amsterdam, named Villa Intifada-Verzet: “We have always been a squat dedicated to showing solidarity with our comrades in Palestine. We deplore the western support for continuing its constant M.O. of genocide and colonization. In the streets I hear chants like ‘Gaza Gaza, don't you cry, we will never let you die’ alongside ‘Hey Joe Biden what you say? How many kids did you kill today?’ That always serves as a reminder about what’s really done to people in Gaza, and to what extent this genocide is directly supported by politicians like Biden. And who else supports this genocide? Why none other than Thales - a dutch weapons manufacturer. Not to mention the government's continued involvement in NATO as they fund more military operations against Palestine. The tragedy of what's happening there is definitely an example of something bigger. It's a reminder that, as Malcolm X put it, we act like the knife isn’t there anymore:
If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made..
And they won't even admit the knife is there.
Having lived in the western world her whole life, Marylea stresses that the most important thing is to recognise the genocidal politics that permeate directly and indirectly the notion of white supremacy. She thinks that westerners have some repenting to do: “We act like we're beyond racism. Like colonialism is a thing of the past. But think of the apartheid state that our countries benefit from. Think of the difference in how we treat Ukraine versus how we treat the majority of non-white issues like Sudan, Palestine, Congo. If you live in the US or Europe then you have a big role to play. Not only do we have to acknowledge the knife but we have to heal the wound. If we dismantle these western powers then the rest of the world may get a massive weight lifted off their shoulders. So don't think this is just what's going on in lands far, far away. You're in the thick of it. You can unite with people of your homeland and redistribute “all power to all the people” as the Black Panthers used to say. So Free Palestine and Free Sudan! End the exploitation of Congo! Let’s topple over these western imperialist powers who have done nothing but oppress and subdue us! Who lie to us and do nothing to heal the wounds they continue to inflict on our planet”.
Photos by Eda Saridogan, edited by Katia