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Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking (Comix Journalism) Kindle & comiXology

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 31 ratings

Threadbare draws the connections between the international sex and garment trades and human trafficking in a beautifully illustrated comics series. Anne Elizabeth Moore, in reports illustrated by top-notch comics creators, pulls at the threads of gender, labor, and cultural production to paint a concerning picture of a human rights in a globalized world. Moore's reporting, illustrated by members of the Ladydrawers Comics Collective, takes the reader from the sweatshops of Cambodia to the traditional ateliers of Vienna, from the life of a globetrotting supermodel to the warehouses of large clothing retailers, from the secondhand clothing industry to the politics of the sex trade. With thoughtful illustrations of women's stories across the sex and garment supply chain, this book offers a practical guide to a growing problem few truly understand.

Featuring the work of Leela Corman, Julia Gfrörer, Simon Häussle, Delia Jean, Ellen Lindner, and Melissa Mendes.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Threadbare
"
Threadbare takes us down the rabbit hole of the global fashion and textile industry, connecting the dots between the lives of the women who work at Forever 21 and the women who sew the clothes that hang on the racks there. With vivid storytelling and deep investigation. Anne Elizabeth Moore and her team of talented cartoonists prove the strength of comics as tool for translating impossible complexity to our everyday experience." --Jessica Abel, Out on the Wire and Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

"A fascinating look into the lives behind our clothes. From the people who make them, to the people who model them, to the people who sell them, our clothes are part of an intricate network which spans the globe. The art in Threadbare helps draw a personal connection to what might otherwise be overwhelming statistics, and gives an intimate look into the way the world is affected by what we buy." --Sarah Glidden, author of Rolling Blackouts and How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

"A compelling and comprehensive portrait of the human cost behind what we wear. The sharp, gorgeous, and distressing Threadbare will leave you questioning both your wardrobe and the state of the world as a whole." --Tim Hanley, author of Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet's Ace Reporter and Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine

"Describing the environmental, social, economic and personal costs of fast fashion in a style cool as gin, Threadbare is both a damning indictment and a stellar example of comics journalism." --Molly Crabapple, Drawing Blood

"Colleges offering degree programs in Fashion need to add this book to the curriculum. A must read!!!!" --Carol Tyler, Late Bloomer and You'll Never Know

"Well-researched, engaging, and full of surprising (and sometimes horrifying) statistics, you may finish reading this book and decide to become an activist--no longer shopping for clothes at your local mall and pressuring your elected officials for legislation that holds clothing manufacturers and retailers responsible." --Lisa Wilde, Yo, Miss: A Graphic Look at High School

"Threadbare is a brilliant amalgam of art, storytelling, consciousness-building, and old-fashioned muckraking. It takes on the enormous project of confronting the international apparel trade, through delving into individual stories and lifting up voices that are usually suppressed or ignored in mass media. The Ladydrawers collective and Anne Elizabeth Moore bring us face to face, literally, with the people most affected by labor exploitation and abuse - and in seeing their faces, we understand the realities beyond the facts. An intrepid journey!" --Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief of Truthout, author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better

Praise for the Ladydrawers
"Beautifully illustrated intellectual ammunition." --
ThinkProgress

"Depressing news, but the comic makes it a little easier to swallow." --Bitch

"Making an art form out of researching and publishing findings that others might write or talk about." --Forbes

"Wry."--New York Times Magazine

Praise for Anne Elizabeth Moore
A "post-Empirical, proto-fourth-wave-feminist memoir-cum-academic abstract [that] makes our country's Mommy Wars look like child's play--and proves ... why we should be paying attention to Cambodia's record of human rights and gender equity." --
Bust Magazine (on New Girl Law)

"Attains the modest yet important success of making personal narratives and experience matter to critiques of history and globalization."--Hyphen Magazine (on Cambodian Grrrl)

"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." --Jean Kilbourne, author, filmmaker, and cultural critic (on Cambodian Grrrl)

"Anne Elizabeth Moore lets readers peer over her shoulder as she attempts the implausible. It turns out, the implausible is hard, and funny, and tragic, and illuminating, but once you sign up for the journey she never lets you look away. After reading what this woman accomplished in a few months, you might ask yourself some hard questions about how you spent last summer . . ." --Glynn Washington, NPR's Snap Judgment (on Cambodian Grrrl)

"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." --Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director, Women In Media & News

"1000000000000000% punk rock." --Jacksonville Public Library (on Cambodian Grrrl)

"Conversational, intellectually curious, and charmingly ragged, Unmarketable is an anti-corporate manifesto with a difference: It exudes raw coolness."--Mother Jones (on Unmarketable)

Offers "something distinctly more radical than merely protesting against consumerism: a total rejection of the competitive ethos that drives capitalist culture." --LA Times (on Unmarketable)

"This is a work of honesty and, yes, integrity."--Kirkus (on Unmarketable)

"Sharp and valuable muckraking." --Time Out New York (on Unmarketable)

About the Author

Anne Elizabeth Moore is an internationally renowned and bestselling cultural critic and comics journalist. Moore is a Fulbright scholar, UN Press Fellow, and USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow, and teaches in the Visual & Critical Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of the Best American Comics series.

The Ladydrawers Comics Collective publishes accessible comics, texts, and films about how economics, race, sexuality, and gender impact the comics industry, other media, and our culture at large. Collective members who contributed to Threadbare include Leela Corman, Melissa Gira Grant, Julia Gfrörer, Sarah Jaffe, Delia Jean, Ellen Lindner, Melissa Mendes, and Anne Elizabeth Moore.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01DFNF2XI
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Microcosm Publishing (May 10, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 10, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 467303 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 31 ratings

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
31 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2016
I am going to give this book five stars for the overall subject matter and because I think other people should learn how these industries intersect around the world.

However...

I bought the paperback copy awhile ago, but the handwritten words in the comics panels are difficult to read. I can manage this earlier in the day, with natural sunlight, but not in the evening, when I'm tired. It should not be published in a book format that's 6"x8". I hope they can come out with another edition in the future that's more like 8"x10".

I then bought the Kindle edition so that I could zoom in. This was even worse! The comics panels are *physically impossible to read*
The picture quality overall in the Kindle edition is also absurdly bad. Maybe I missed it, but I can't find a zoom option in the phone app, the in-browser reader, or the desktop software.

I eventually opened the book in Comixology. This seems to use completely different image files. Everything is clear! You can zoom in! So, this seems like the best option now, but it's frustrating that I had to try so many formats in the first place. I can assume a lot of people wouldn't bother.
7 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2019
This book will 100% change the way you feel about how clothes are produced and sold. While the print is VERY small in some sections, the material is important enough that overlooking the font is easy.
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2018
Very well connected book. At first I wasn't a fan of the comic book delivery, but quickly I was sold.
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2021
Quirky and engaging discussion of the title themes from a first person perspective. A sobering look at clothing consumption and human exploitation with nice artwork.
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2016
Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking is a fascinating read, full of disturbing information about the rise of the fast fashion industry and how the apparel trade is related to human trafficking and the jobs women have as options worldwide, especially those living in poverty. Anne Elizabeth Moore has substantially researched and written a series of essays illustrated by the “Ladydrawers Comics Collective” — Leela Corman, Julia Gfrörer, Ellen Lindner, Delia Jean, Melissa Mendes, Simon Hätussle.

Unfortunately, it’s marred by its origins. Threadbare began as a monthly series of comic journalism pieces online. Many of the pages are thus formatted for the landscape-oriented screen. When sized down to fit on book pages, the lettering — particularly Gfrörer’s uniquely styled handwriting — was nearly impossible for me to read in some cases. I was frustrated by wanting to take in every morsel of information here, but I was unable to do so.

The book is divided into four sections, which are both geographically determined and themed by subject. The US is where readers learn about fashion retail, distribution, and importing; Austria covers male consumers, textile history, and traditional costume; Cambodia is where we see the factories, their need for cheap labor, and worker abuse and exploitation; and the World, which makes explicit the charges that women “rescued” from the sex industry are still being exploited in the garment industry, which pays less than a living wage. Each chapter is followed by a section of endnotes, backing up the statements.

If you’re not familiar with H&M and Forever 21, the opening chapters will be eye-opening, at how cheaply fashion is sold and how quickly items are stocked, changed over, and discarded. It’s to drive more, and more frequent, purchases. Retail clerks are interviewed, as is a former model. By the time I got to the World section, though, I thought things had gotten a bit muddled, trying to make a case for consenting sex work (not all prostitutes are victims of human trafficking, in other words). Perhaps my head was just swimming from all the facts and figures. The book is a better read done in pieces, not all at once.

As I alluded to before, although described as comics, often, the sheer amount of text takes over the panels with the artists resorting to drawing simply faces or background images. Very little additional information is gained from the images, although the format will likely bring this content to the attention of readers who otherwise wouldn’t pay attention. (The publisher provided a review copy. Review originally posted at ComicsWorthReading.com.)
4 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2016
I've really enjoyed the contents of this book. It's laid out logically and in segments that are easy to follow. The only problem seems to be the quality of the comic strips. Some strips are impossible to read on the computer or the kindle. I could only read it on the ipad, which wasn't so great either. Some strips I just couldn't read/understand simply because of the picture quality. However, content-wise the book is amazing. If you're looking to understand how the garment industry is exploiting women worldwide and read into the parallelism between the garment and the sex industry, this is the right book for you.
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2016
A magnifying glass - literally - is required to read about 33% of this book's content.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2019
The content was very informative and educational, definitely up there in the “must read” level. It’s an eye-opening look at the global garment industry and sex trade. However, the design of the physical book itself is why I knocked off 1 star because the book is literally difficult to read. The book is a collection of journalistic comics which were I assume originally printed in a much larger format. Here, many of the comics are reduced to the point where the lettering is at times less than 2 millimeters high. The publisher and designer did a real disservice to the creators of this book. It deserves a reprint.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Esme
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2017
Great book with an easy to follow narrative and excellent citation and references. A real eye-opener!
Ilaria Lo Cascio
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good book!
Reviewed in Italy on December 20, 2016
I loved this book very much! I love the graphic and the topic (a very difficult one) is treated in an easy way! Very very recommended!
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