In Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, writer and independent publisher Anne Elizabeth Moore brings her experience in the American cultural underground to Cambodia, a country known mostly for the savage extermination of around 2 million of its own under the four-year reign of the Khmer Rouge. Following the publication of her critically acclaimed book Unmarketable and the demise of the magazine she co-published, Punk Planet, and armed with the knowledge that the second generation of genocide survivors in Cambodia had little knowledge of their country's brutal history, Moore disembarked to Southeast Asia hoping to teach young women how to make zines. What she learned instead were brutal truths about women's rights, the politics of corruption, the failures of democracy, the mechanism of globalization, and a profound emotional connection that can only be called love. Moore's fascinating story from the cusp of the global economic meltdown is a look at her time with the first all-women's dormitory in the history of the country, just kilometers away from the notorious Killing Fields. Her tale is a noble one, as heartbreaking as it is hilarious; staunchly ethical yet conflicted and human. The in-depth examination of Moore's stint among the first large group of social-justice-minded young women from the impoverished provinces is told in intimate, mood-evocative, beautifully-written first-person prose. Cambodian Grrrl is the first in a series of short essay collections on contemporary media, art, and educational work by, for, and with young women in Southeast Asia. Part memoir and part investigative report, Moore's story could only be told by her, and the result is illuminating, and vital, reading.
"One of the sharpest thinkers and cultural critics bouncing around the globe today" -- Razorcake.
Anne Elizabeth Moore is a Fulbright scholar, Truthout columnist, and the multiple award-winning author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007) and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull, 2004). Co-editor and publisher of now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin, Moore teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and works with young women in Cambodia on independent media projects. Moore exhibits her work frequently as conceptual art, has been the subject of two documentary films, and her work appeared on the radio program Snap Judgment and in the Progressive, Bitch, and on Truthout. She has written for The Onion, Feministing, The Stranger, In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, and Tin House. She has twice been noted in the Best American Non-Required Reading series. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, Today's Chicago Woman, and Print magazines, and on GritTV and NPR's Worldview. She recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Her latest book for Cantankerous Titles, Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, recently received a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism.
She was born in Winner, South Dakota. Seriously.
