New Girl Law: Drafting a Future for Cambodia by Anne Elizabeth Moore

New Girl Law: Drafting a Future for Cambodia Reviews

• 
  Veronica

  A full review is forthcoming. I need to let this settle into my soul.
• 
  Malcolm

  Five stars are not enough!
  
  This is Anne Elizabeth Moore’s second foray into print about a project in Cambodia where she lived and worked with a group of young women university students. In
  Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh she discussed the process of giving voice to these young women through self-publishing zines. In itself this was a subversive act – these are the first generation of women university students in a context that routinely denies them a voice, a view, an ability to express themselves in public; I am in awe of this project as a practical piece of feminist activism.
  
  There are a few references in Cambodian Grrrl to the systemic basis of this marginalisation and silencing of women – but in this, the second of four promised titles about this project, Moore takes us right into Chbap Srei, the Girl Law. This, as in many settings where there is a powerful oral tradition, is passed down through family lines but is also published and it becomes clear that in both media it has a powerful effect on the young women in the dormitory Moore lives in – young women whose marriage partners are likely to be chosen for them, who must learn to negotiate the pathways of corruption within Cambodian society and maintained by global business and political relations. These are exceptionally bright young women, many of whom are concurrently studying for two degrees at different universities and who hope to manage banks, become politicians, study abroad and move beyond the difficult provincial lives of their parents all of whom lived through the Khmer Rouge years and continue to negotiate the daily demands of survival. These are young women whose options, if they fail, are the market stall their parents run, the textile factory where our clothes are made, or if they’re lucky and can pay the bribes a government job. The stakes are incredibly high.
  
  When one of the young women in the dormitory (32 live there including Moore) expressed some discontent with the Chbap Srei discussions start; Moore asks “If you could rewrite it, what would it say?” (p 30). Gradually as discussions develop new rules emerge; that they are considered subversive or disruptive should unsettle readers – the new rules include “Girls should be allowed to choose their marriage partner by themselves, in consultation with their parents” or “Girls should be brave enough to make eye contact with and speak to boys” or “Women should have the right to leave the home and join in social activities as men do, or be involved in politics”. Other new rules made me cheer – “”Women should have access to free high quality feminine protection” or “Funding should be established for cultural production”.
  
  Moore’s narrative shows these young women being prodded at the outset, but eventually taking control of the debate, some arriving at their irregular evening discussions with fully worked out propositions. We see these women drawing on their studies to analyse their world – the lawyers, accountants, economists and others bringing forward their knowledge of the issues around them to create social analyses and educate each other. These are not just rules for young women though, they begin to develop a critical analysis of Cambodian life – “Laws as written should be enforced by everyone, including lawmakers”.
  
  Moore also allows the women to speak, more than we heard in Cambodian Grrrl, with chapters that alternate between the development of Chbap Srei Tmein (the New Girl Laws) and interviews with several of the 31 students in the dormitory. This structure reveals these young women’s powerful voices and gives us as readers a sharp insight into experiences of Cambodian life and its silences. The most profound of those silences is revealed when several of the young women decide to visit the Killing Fields memorial; of all those who said they would, only five go. Moore accompanies them and in the book's most powerful chapter she evokes these young women’s sense of distress, discomfort, alarm and grief at what they are seeing, and what’s more that the ‘executioner’ many of the signs refer to was Cambodian; in 2008, when this visit occurred parts of the memorial was still an excavation site – it was not the tourist experience it is now.
  
  To her credit, Moore is pragmatic and realistic about these young women’s chances and the forces ranged against their voices being heard, the Chbap Srei Tmein gaining traction or their chances of becoming bank managers, politicians or studying abroad and the conclusion is sobering in the extreme. But the project itself remains inspiring and uplifting; I was utterly absorbed as I cheered, laughed and sniffled my way through these brief 125 pages.
  
  This should be required reading for activists whether or not we are feeling ground down by the daily tasks of trying to build social change, for international development workers, for those of us who think we have a handle on global politics. Seldom have I reached the end of book and felt so uplifted by a small attempt to change a small part of the world; this might just be my book of the year.
• 
  Vykki

  This was a great novel. It was written by wonderful author, I enjoyed it from beginning to end. I won this book on good reads.