China Martens started her pioneering mamazine The Future Generation in 1990. She was a young anarchist punk rock mother who didn't feel that the mamas in her community had enough support, so she began publishing articles on radical parenting in an age before the internet.
The anthology of her zine, The Future Generation: The Zine-Book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others, was first printed in 2007 and has been out of print for many years. Covering sixteen years, it uses individual issues as chapters, focusing on personal writing, and retaining the character of a zine that changed over the yearsāfrom her daughterās birth to teenagehood and beyond.
We are proud to present a tenth-anniversary edition including a new afterword by China's grown daughter, Clover. The Future Generation remains a timeless resource for parents, caregivers, and those who care about them. Though first published in the 1990s, many of the essays and observationsāabout parenting, children, and surviving in a hostile political climateāstill ring true today. The next four years are going to be especially demanding for those trying to balance parenting, politics, and survival. We're going to need the voices and experiences in The Future Generation now more than ever.
What People Are Saying
āThe original punk parent zine.ā āAriel Gore, Hip Mama
āMartens has been writing since long before the mommy wars were a media trope, but her work is a powerful response to punditry casting institutional and political problems as personal issues of 'work-life balance' for mothers (notably, not fathers).ā āLisa Jervis, Bitch magazine
āThe Future Generation is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Adrienne Rich's idea of mothering (Of Woman Born) based on the mother's own experience, not the patriarchal definition of motherhood in which mothers must be surveilled, controlled, advised, and punished. For here is an evolution of mothering, a memoir of a conscious mother. Get it. Read it. Pass it on.ā āKatherine Arnoldi, author of The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom and All Things Are Labor
āI am deeply inspired by The Future Generation. I remember feeling seen, held, and affirmed when I read the anthology. I felt like I had a sister in all the complex things I was feeling as a new mother.ā āMariahadessa Ekere Tallie, author of Karmaās Footsteps and Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation
āThe Future Generation is deeply touching and eye-openingly intimate.ā āJordannah Elizabeth, author of Donāt Lose Track
About the Author
China Martens is a zinestress extraordinaire based in Baltimore, MD. Her first book, The Future Generation, is a compilation of sixteen years of her first zine. She is also the coeditor of Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines.