"Cambodian Grrrl" Brings the Zine to Phnom Penh

[ensho]

http://www.truth-out.org/cambodian-grrrl-brings-zine-phnom-penh/1316197969


Decades after the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, Cambodian children still find human bones in their schoolyards. Past the tourist thoroughfares, where street entrepreneurs make cheery pitches to foreigners who've come to see the killing fields, very few people speak of them at all. The government salaries of rice and expired canned milk have been replaced with actual money, but teachers still earn so little that classrooms function like bribe mills where "thank-you money" earns a seat close enough to hear the teacher.

Women and girls in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia have more than a history of poverty and genocide to contend with. Stranded at the margins of a weak economy, their destinies might be rerouted through the violent world of sex trafficking, or their lives are cheapened by subtler means like the Chbap Srei. Under the guise of tradition, this nineteenth-century "Girl Law" delivers its unequivocal lessons: If a boy or man enters the room? Avert your eyes. If your husband beats you? Remain still. And so on.

To be fair, none of the women in Anne Elizabeth Moore's "Cambodian Grrrl" (released September 3) seem to spend much time reading the Chbap Srei, but several of them keep copies on their desks - the same desks where they study to become some of the country's first women lawyers, accountants and politicians. (Full disclosure: Moore is a member of Truthout's board of advisers.) They are the residents of Euglossa Dormitory for University Women, home to some of the country's most driven and justice-minded college students, and - at least for three months - to Moore. The activist-writer-artist, who locked in her DIY cred with her 2007 book, "Unmarketable," arrives in Phnom Penh with a Fulbright scholarship and a plan to teach Euglossa's young women the art of zine-making. But how can a sheet of A4 paper overtake the long cultural shadow of the Chbap Srei?

-longish snip of the trials and tribulations of being a 'girl' in Cambodia-

With its slender binding and intimate voice, "Cambodian Grrrl" is kind of like a zine with an ISBN. In 95 pages, Moore risks more, and reveals more, than plenty of those longer books that are practically branded as "serious literature" (you know the ones). Its emotional and intellectual honesty remind us what storytelling is for, and Moore's students are already using their stories to change their country. Even before she leaves, Moore gets to see the results in an email from one of their newsstands: "I hear you are the one who make the zine. We are desperate for zine."
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hugs and kisses for Elizabeth and hugs and kisses for the Cambodian girl zinezers

[tridim]

1. Facebook and Skype are changing Cambodia.

I'm watching it happen every day, in real-time.

Cambodian culture (specifically in Phnom Penh) has become a part of my life during the past year.

[ensho]

2. interesting - keep us updated on life there - please

nt