INFO
| Name | Mellow Yellow |
| Year | 2005 |
| Publisher | Mellow Yellow |
| Type of Text | Zine |
| Artform | Zines |
ABOUT
Mellow Yellow is a collaborative zine series and online blog dedicated to anti-racism, Asian feminism, and encouraging radical social change in Aotearoa. Established in 2005 by Wai Ho, Mellow Yellow was one of the first online and print publication spaces for “Asian feminists in Aotearoa can speak and communicate our specific and diverse experiences, to counter the dominant white feminisms and left-wing politics, to challenge colonialism, racism, sexism and all forms of unjust social hierarchy”.
Mellow Yellow initially grew out of Ho’s feelings of disconnect with their ancestral heritage and background as a first generation immigrant — their parents were from Kuala Lumpur and grandparents from Southern China. Being involved with decolonial practices and tino rangatiratanga, Ho wanted a space for Asian communities to untangle feelings around feminism, racism and heritage on their own terms. The blog and zine series became a way to address these concepts with autonomy and freedom.
The first issue of Mellow Yellow zine was released in 2006 and focused on what it meant to be Chinese tauiwi living on colonised land. Featured work included a range of writing, art, poetry and rants sourced from an open call, made both locally and internationally. Calls for submissions were exclusively for individuals of Asian heritage and priority was given to writing that maintained an accessible style — informal and readable for a wide audience. The zines were released sporadically and Ho comments that “we just did one when we wanted to do one”, speaking to the spontaneous nature of the series.
Mellow Yellow maintains a simple DIY zine style, embracing the activist history of zinemaking. This would later become an inspiration for Helen Yeung’s Migrant Zine Collective aesthetic in 2017. There have currently been nine released issues of Mellow Yellow and they have been archived as important Asian feminist publications both in Aotearoa and internationally, notably within the London College of Communication (LCC) Zine Collection, Hong Kong’s Asia Arts Archive, and the College of Creative Arts at Massey University.
With zinemaking still a Pākehā-dominated community in the early 2000s, Mellow Yellow was among some of the first zines to take up space for people of colour at zinefests. Mengzhu Fu reflects that: “It was really eye opening for me when I was given [Mellow Yellow] because at the time I did not know any other Asian people involved in grassroots social justice or feminist activism”. Mellow Yellow established a space for Asian feminists to openly and safely explore questions of identity and existence as tauiwi in Aotearoa, and became a formative community for people to collaborate.
LINKS
Key works / presentations
2018 — Mellow Yellow #9
2017 — Mellow Yellow #8
2016 — Mellow Yellow #7
2012 — Mellow Yellow #6
2012 — Mellow Yellow #5
2011 — Mellow Yellow #4
2009 — Mellow Yellow #3
2009 — Mellow Yellow #2
2006 — Mellow Yellow #1
