POC Harry Potter Zine

A project to celebrate all the POC of the Harry Potter verse! Here we'll reblog finished submissions, answer any questions and publish updates! DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A NON PROFIT PROJECT AND IS NOT AFFILIATED IN ANY WAY WITH JK ROWLING, BLOOMSBURY OR SCHOLASTIC. of the Harry Potter series belongs to J.K. Rowling.

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Hey you guys the physical zine will no longer be available come Monday!

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The Zine will be available till end of September you guys!

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Sending out the first lot of zines tomorrow!

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If you bought the zine, let us know what you think!

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THE POC HARRY POTTER ZINE IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Curated by Vic Granzinoli (cmndrgriffin) and Tara Anand (chimericalnousse), the zine features 11 full colour pages of artwork by tumblr based artists like dellbelle39, sibandit, cmndrgriffin, chimericalnousse, taranovae, abbietheowl, @zoelartjoan, incredibru, ainhochu, mmischieffmanagedd and stilesstays!

The project is aimed at celebrating the POC characters (both canon and headcanon) of the Harry Potter universe!

The zine is A4, size, printed matte on card paper and consists of 32 pages total.

You can get it at our etsy shop!

(If your location isn’t listed in the list of destinations we ship to, shoot us an email at [email protected] and we’ll see what we can do!)

(This is a non profit zine, the cost of the zine covers only the cost of printing and packaging and the cost of the digital zine covers overheads like the cost of materials like paper and pins)

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS! shoot us an email with your address/ info so we can ship the zine to you for free (you’ll have to pay shipping if you’re buying a physical copy)

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I love your zine idea! Have you thought of doing a Pakistani Snape? When I read the books for the first time I pictured him looking a lot like someone I met later -- prof. Saleem Ali of the University of VT. Search "Saleem Ali UVM" on YouTube or Google Images and you'll get plenty of hits. (My mental image had slightly hollower cheeks and of course long hair, but Ali's posture/body language are especially Snape-y IMO, and the accent's pretty close to my headcanon.) Good luck with your project!

Haha that's a really cool idea! (I looked him up i definitely see what you mean!) Unfortunately submissions are closed for the zine at the moment but if we have another edition I'll definitely keep that in mind!

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Hey guys! We did a trial printing sans text and I thought I'd show you the results! (The actual zine will be printed on thicker paper) Finishing up some last minute changes to the layout and we'll have the store up asap! Thanks to everyone who participated!! (Remember zines will be print to order and will be available for a limited time so gear up!)

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Also the blog is being glitchy so send messages to hellkatespangled and chimericalnousse not this blog

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Oookay you guys, I know its been a while but here’s the final cover for the zine! We should be opening orders in the next few weeks so get ready for that! 

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Submissions are now closed, hang tight we should have the zine ready in a couple of weeks!

Will update here on whether/where we’re selling print copies

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Lee Jordan for pocharrypotterzine

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Thanks for participating! It's lovely!

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No, they're both clearly framed as white in canon, given their cultural background and the complete lack of any framing around Harry or James being Desi or Hermione being Black. Race is more than a colour, it's a heritage, a cultura,l completely different experience. Using a brown paint brush and colouring characters brown is a bit insulting to actual POCs because it limits their experience to colour. People should have what ever headcanons they like, but stop claiming your headcanon is canon.

"By all means, make Harry Desi, make Hermione black, but don't the ingore the implications of that, how it would change their lives and stories. Are you saying that their race has no implication on who they are? JKR drew the as white. She's open to her fans imagining her characters however they like, because she's awesome. But she envisions Harry and Hermione as white. This whole "H and H are POC in canon" smacks of cookie seeking. CHANGE their races, don't pretend they were black all along." Not sure if you're the same anon so I'll just answer both at the same time anyway. We're not saying it's canon, we're saying it could be. You have to assume there's been some level of assimilation as well here, these are at least second generation British kids, they've probably inculcated a lot from their surroundings and their peers at school/home so you can't expect them to be as immersed in their culture as kids living in say India or Africa would be. That being said, are you saying they should have been portrayed as acting or talking differently from the other kids at Hogwarts? Because that's stereotyping and also unrealistic considering they were probably well assimilated into western culture. In no way am I denying that POC have rich cultural heritage but we're talking about a magical school, muggle culture isn't discussed much. Apart from their names there's now way we would be able to tell that Cho Chang or the Patil twins were POC because JKR doesn't feel the need to emphasise that fact. Race doesn't have a place at Hogwarts. (The article I linked to in my last answer has an interesting view on that.) The part about it having no implications on who they are? There are umpteen posts on tumblr itself where people discuss this but I'll say it anyway (if any of you could link to the posts if you come across them that'd be nice..) the dursleys' prejudice against Harry and their not liking the fact that he looks like James fits well into the assumption that Harry is Indian or whatever race you wish to imagine because it's not an uncommon attitude in conservative homes (and the dursleys are extremely conservative; they pride themselves on normalcy) Hermione, being of African descent and therefore coming from a race that is/was most infamously enslaved and mistreated would definitely act the way she did when she discovered the way house elves were treated. Those are just a few examples but you get the picture. We're not pretending that they were black all along, nor are we demanding that you conform to our images of the characters, just that there's enough ambiguity on the matter in the books, and there's no harm in envisioning a character to look different. It won't change who they are fundamentally, or take away from their roles in the books (if anything it will enrich them as characters.) And regarding your "cookie seeking" comment, many of our contributors and admin are POC, whose approval do you think we're seeking?

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Hey if someone sent us a message, could you resend it? Because tumblr ate it up..

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Harry and Hermione are not canonically POC. Making them POC is fine and wonderful, but it's racebending.

Actually neither Harry nor Hermione’s race is ever mentioned in the books. Rowling only occasionally uses race to describe her characters (as in the cases of Angelina and Lee Jordan) but with most she neglects to specify any race. No where in the books is it mentioned that they’re POC but at the same time, its not mentioned that they AREN’T either. 

     Infact there are multiple references made to Hermione being “brown” and that, along with her bushy dark hair could well suggest African heritage! Harry’s skin is only described as going very pale when he’s afraid (that’s no indication of race, everybody goes pale with fear) and while Lilly Potter is likely white (because of her red hair and green eyes which are mostly caucasian traits), James potter’s race is, again, never specified. The only description we have of him in terms of tone is his jet black hair, which again could suggest South or East asian ancestry or even African. 

  I’m going to direct you to some posts/articles here that address this better than I could possible so..

http://galifreyy.tumblr.com/post/79998468207/poc-potter-makes-so-much-sense-though-think-about

http://crowry.tumblr.com/post/42335130025/regarding-race-in-harry-potter

http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~lyubansk/Harry%20Potter.pdf

and also this fantastic blog dedicated to the subject if any of you are interested: http://racebendingharrypotter.tumblr.com/

side note: This is a fantasy series, we’re all perfectly willing to imagine that dragons and ghosts and werewolves exist but god forbid the main character of a popular book series be a Poc! 

[sibandit]

James Potter for pocharrypotterzine.

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Fantastic!

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Reminder to all participants to please email your submissions as a JPEG file 

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Alicia Spinnet for the pocharrypotterzine chimericalnousse and I are doing!

The deadline has been extended, so there is still time to participate