Year of the Rabbit: a graphic novel memoir of one family's life under the Khmer Rouge

Cory Doctorow 4:37 am Wed Jan 22, 2020

In 1975, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia after expelling a US puppet regime, surviving a brutal US bombing campaign despite the massive asymmetry between the Cambodian forces and the US military. Tian Veasna was born three days after the Khmer Rouge took power, and spent his formative years in forced labor camps as his family were beaten, starved, tortured and murdered. Today, Veasna is a comics creator living in France, and in Year of the Rabbit, Veasna creates a coherent story out of his family's narratives, giving us a ground-level view of the horrors of the Pol Pot regime, whose campaign of genocide led to the deaths of more than a million people.

Year of the Rabbit is firmly in the tradition of other graphic novels of genocide, such as Art Spiegelman's classic, Pulitzer-winning Maus, but Veasna's reconstructing a much less-well-known holocaust, one whose perverse terrors were every bit as sadistic and grotesque as the Nazi extermination campaigns.

Veasna perfectly captures that Anne Frank feeling of waking nightmare, in which the natural human tendency to assume that things can't be as bad as they seem leads people into deeper and deeper danger, as their tormentors find new reservoirs of depraved cruelty to dip into.

And likewise, this book captures the indomitability of the human spirit, the perseverance and kindnesses, the inventiveness and resourcefulness of people helping one another even when they have nothing.

Today, Cambodia is a very different kind of corrupt dictatorship, but despite its dictatorial government, it has brought some of the masterminds of the Cambodian genocide to account. Narratives like Veasna's are critical to understanding what happened and to guard against it ever happening again.

Year of the Rabbit [Tian Veasna/Drawn and Quarterly]

Drone filmmaker captures Children's Fairyland from the view of a flying fairy — and it's downright magical

There's still magic in the world, as evidenced by this fairy's-eye view of Children's Fairyland, that charming 70-year-old storybook theme park in Oakland, California. You might remember that when I'm… READ THE REST
This deck of wholesome activities inspires mini-adventures

We've been writing about Lea Redmond since 2009 here on Boing Boing. She's just one of those kind of people who consistently makes neat things — a real Happy Mutant!… READ THE REST
This house for sale in Pittsburgh is filled with whimsical themed rooms

Listed at $159,900 this 1,075 square-foot home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is bland on the outside but features rooms with outer space, submarine, tropical island, and moonbase motifs. The owners put… READ THE REST
Short Post, just one paragraph

Dessert cheesecake wafer bear claw fruitcake. Fruitcake chupa chups donut candy canes marzipan. Apple pie sweet roll tart chocolate cake macaroon marshmallow carrot cake gummi bears sweet. Pastry sugar plum… READ THE REST
Save 50% on a 1-year subscription to Dashlane's premium password manager

We all know vital information about ourselves and our private digital accounts can be compromised by cybercriminals. However, many would be frightened to know just how compromised they and their… READ THE REST
The Bite Helper removes the itch of a mosquito bite in seconds

While mosquitoes have certainly earned their title as the deadliest animal on earth, their impact on most of our lives is usually a lot less consequential. But even though they… READ THE REST