Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh
by Anne Elizabeth Moore
ISBN: 978-1-934620-89-2
$7.95
96 pages
About Cambodian Grrrl
“The best travel book I’ve read this year.” –USA Today / Perceptive Travel
Part memoir and part investigative journalism, Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh is the first in a series of four books on contemporary media, art, and educational work by, for, and with young women in Southeast Asia.
Critically acclaimed author and independent publisher Anne Elizabeth Moore traveled to Cambodia to live in the first women’s university dormitory in the country’s history. Her mission is to teach the self-publishing and media literacy skills she learned in America’s cultural underground to her charges, social justice-minded young women from the country’s impoverished rural areas.
The result is a compelling tale of young women learning about their country’s own brutal history for the first time—and finding the means to tell their own stories. The backdrop is Moore’s incisive, intimate, and profoundly ethical exploration of corruption, women’s rights, globalization and democracy in a country recovering from genocide and on the cusp of the global economic meltdown. The result is illuminating, vital reading.
“In 95 pages, Moore risks more, and reveals more, than plenty of those longer books that are practically branded as “serious literature.” Its emotional and intellectual honesty remind us what storytelling is for, and Moore’s students are already using their stories to change their country.” —Truth Out
“The peculiarity of Moore, a former editor of Punk Planet, bringing her riot grrrl ethos to Cambodia works. It’s the basic ethos behind the DIY movement that makes Moore’s storytelling more refreshing and responsible than much US writing about Cambodia. Attains the modest yet important success of making personal narratives and experience matter to critiques of history and globalization.” —Hyphen Magazine
“A quirky, brisk, and piercingly honest recitation of one woman’s experience in a post-conflict society overseas…as close to an immersive experience as travel writing can come.” —The Rumpus
“Sitting down to read a dense historical book about the lasting impact of the Khmer Rouge is not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’m glad Cambodian Grrrl exists to tell those stories in a captivating, conversational form.” —Portland Mercury
“She had just planned on promoting the power of independent media through self-publishing zines—but she ended up experiencing a hell of a lot more. This longtime co-publisher of Punk Planet mixed with the second generation of Cambodian genocide survivors, and in doing so learned a little bit about political corruption and pain, but also about the hope that love can bring. And who knew just how much learning about self-published media could inspire a community.” —Seattlest
“Moore comes up against some tough questions, and the responses, in a blend of memoir and investigative reporting, will be illuminating and intensely personal in a way that is uniquely hers.” –The Indypendent
“Somehow Anne is able to discuss issues of democracy, freedom of speech, the global garment market, slave labor, rape, mass murder and a litany of other tough subjects and leave me smiling. That left me with hope that all we really do need is love. And a sharpie.” –Viva la Feminista
“One of the most important books of the year.” –Largehearted Boy
About the Author:
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007) and Hey Kidz, Buy this Book (Soft Skull, 2004). She is a columnist for Truthout, and has written for The Progressive, Bitch, Annalemma, Tin House, the Boston Phoenix, and the Onion. She is the former editor of Punk Planet and the Comics Journal. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, Print, the Phnom Penh Post, NPR’s Worldview, and USA Today’s travel blog. Moore received a Fulbright to continue her work in Cambodia in 2010. When she’s not adventuring, Moore lives in Chicago and maintains an active art exhibition schedule, including a recent solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Links
Feel free to use these high resolution images:
- The book’s cover by artist Esther Pearl Watson
- Anne Elizabeth Moore’s author photo
- Two young women in Phnom Penh, a photo by the author
- Press release and sell sheet
- Anne Elizabeth Moore’s travel blog Camb(l)o(g)dia.
- Fall 2011 book tour schedule.
Advance Reviews:
Jennifer L. Pozner, executive director of Women in the Media and News:
Imagine a country whose young women are systemically denied education, whose media are largely state-controlled, and whose genocidal history has been virtually purged from its citizens’ collective memory. Now imagine an itinerant feminist writer, former punk, artist, and independent media-maker arriving to give 32 young women the deceptively simple independent publishing tools they need to tell their stories—and, in the process, to become powerful advocates for their own rights and for the just future of their country. Cambodian Grrrl offers a compelling and spirited model of what is possible when media-making becomes a community endeavor. Don’t understand why media is a human rights issue? You will by the end of Anne Elizabeth Moore’s latest effort.
Lee Sandlin, literary critic for the Wall Street Journal:
An improbable little traveller’s tale that becomes a surprisingly complex and moving portrait of a people’s resilience in the face of an unimaginable historical tragedy. Cambodian Grrrl is fierce, charming, impassioned, and humane.
Jean Kilbourne, creator of the “Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women” film series:
A passionate, engaging, heartbreaking, funny, and inspiring book. I want to slip it into every tourist guide to Asia and give a copy to every girl in the world.
1000000000000000% punk rock.
Glynn Washington, host of NPR’s Snap Judgment:
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the ultimate travel companion. She doesn’t just squeeze us into her luggage—she lets readers peer right over her shoulder as she attempts the implausible. Turns out, the implausible is hard, and funny, tragic, and illuminating, but once you sign up for the journey she never lets you look away (because she never did). Be forewarned, after reading what this woman accomplished in a few months, you might just ask yourself some hard questions about how you spent last summer . . .