independent

When I began to read and collect zines I kept one or two in my backpack. Soon they sat in neat piles on my desk, and in a matter of weeks they haphazardly slouched out of shoeboxes. Now these self-made independent periodicals burst through bags and bins in every room of my apartment, unwilling to be contained in the literal as well as figurative sense. One local zinester donated a part of his collection to the Minneapolis Community and Technical College library, twenty boxes strong. What is a zine and how do they engage readers in a way that traditional literature does not and cannot?