In 2006, Osa Atoe picked up pen and paper and began to write herself into history. She had decided to create a fanzine, titled Shotgun Seamstress, with a simple manifesto: to support “Black people who exist within predominantly white subcultures, and to encourage the creation of our own.” She went on to produce eight issues, and now those lovingly crafted pages have been compiled into an anthology that celebrates her zine’s status as one of the most iconic subcultural documents of the 00s alt-rock scene.
“I think it had to do with finding a genre that encourages participation,” reflects Atoe from her Florida home. “My parents are Nigerian, and my dad always had a big record collection, mostly pop and R&B. I was a teen in the 90s so it was impossible to not know about grunge, but punk was the first genre that told me that I could be in a band.”
