Papyrus and Irish Men

Long had I wanted to write something about masculinity. Its contours intrigue me and attract me, repel me and inspire me, and so this zine was crafted to shine a light on a large group of people, but a group that remains shrouded in a cloak of Americanness, of whiteness, of unspoken linkages to an older and mutual ancestral land. I noted patterns and I noted similarities.

In doing this, I found a narrative mirror in the 1983 typeface, Papyrus, in the ways it is also old looking but related to no place. Like “Irishness” Papyrus is in an invocation, deployed at strategic moments to lull the audience into a comforting but benign and apolitical nostalgia.

This zine is personal, for it documents the time when I began to look for a suitor, accomplice, comrade, partner of a romantic sort. Irish American men emerged in droves, and my intent is not to exploit them in these pages, but to revere and humanize them, for the Irish American male has long endured Papyrus-ification, condemned to echo of some ancient power source but de-strengthened in the current context, the digital age, the realm of intelligence artificial.

The zine is illustrated and hand-written by the author, who attempts to "draw papyrus" for page headings.

28 pages

80lb paper

110lb cover

Perfect Binding

Published January 2025