Rad Dad #19

As Rad Dad editor Tomas Moniz says in issue 19's first essay, “Parenting has taught me a lot about dealing with things I’d rather not deal with.” This is the Rad Dad “heavy topics” issue; its pages are concerned with talking to your kids about topics you might shy away from—important issues like racism, sexism, death, domestic violence, police brutality, and environmental crisis. Rad Dad is, as always, about communication, about not shutting off when your kids need help making sense of the things happening around them. And sometimes that's the hardest part—when you yourself are fighting to make sense of a changing terrain. Says Tomas in the zine's intro, “For my family, there was violence in our neighborhood as a number of young men were killed, friends of ours were assaulted in their homes, domestic violence happened in a family we were close to. Suddenly, it seemed I was just trying to keep up with things, let alone talk about them with my kids. But they were listening; they were witnesses to it all and witnesses to how we, the adults in their lives, reacted.” The psychic landscape this issue navigates can be harrowing but Rad Dad retains the loving, constructive light of positivity and forward motion it has cultivated since issue 1. This is important reading—vital stuff for parents and nonparents alike.