Utne Reader's library is abuzz with a steady flow of 1,500 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, zines, and other lively dispatches from the cultural front that are rarely found at big-box bookstores, newsstands, or even online. So we share the highlights (and occasional lowlights) of what's landing in our library each week in 'From the Stacks.' Check in every Friday for the latest edition.

Hermana, Resist, a personal zine (or 'perzine') by Noemi Martinez, offers frank discussions of racism, feminism, motherhood, and poverty. That's not a familiar confluence of themes in the zine community, which, as Martinez notes in the latest issue (#6), includes few writers of color. She expresses her thoughts and frustrations with ease, through stream-of-consciousness diary entries and poetry. I found the zine uncommonly intimate, despite her claim that she hadn't 'given enough of [herself]' in writing it. Though much of Hermana, Resist relays Martinez's struggles, which, as a single mother living below the poverty line, are considerable, bright spots appear when she writes about her children or reports on a bilingual production of TheVagina Monologues she took part in. Martinez also owns the C/S Distro, which stocks and distributes zines by women and people of color. -- Danielle Maestretti

The editors of Other are out to stage a 'surgical intervention' on conventional concepts of gender in the July 2007 issue. 'Don?t worry,' the editors' note reads, 'it won't leave a scar or anything. We'll just drill a small hole in your skull, stick the cauterizing tool inside, and burn out the part of your brain that recognizes people as 'male' and 'female.'' A nonprofit magazine from the Institute for Unpopular Culture, Other focuses on the cultural and political scenes of 'new outcasts.' Poetry, nonfiction, and comics about 'subversivism,' sex workers, and strippers provide candid portrayals of sexual identity that challenge the gender status-quo. An essay by Andrea Zanin showcases the variety of sexual attractions, asserting that the male-female gender binary isn't enough to define sexuality: 'When you're painting with only black and white, you're only showing one interpretation of the picture.' -- Julie Dolan