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Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking (Comix Journalism) Kindle & comiXology
Featuring the work of Leela Corman, Julia Gfrörer, Simon Häussle, Delia Jean, Ellen Lindner, and Melissa Mendes.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMicrocosm Publishing
- Publication dateMay 10, 2016
- Reading age14 years and up
- File size467303 KB
- Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download
- Read this book on comiXology. Learn more
Editorial Reviews
Review
"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
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:
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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.
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.)