Description: Mao and Me is a graphic memoir of Chen Jiang Hong who grew up in North China in an era of political turbulence and material scarcity. Chen lives with his parents, grandparents and two older sisters in a narrow dark apartment in Tianjin (a major city 90 miles away from Beijing). Life is difficult but the family manages it happily until one day, “a voice announced from the radio –‘Chairman Mao has proclaimed a great Cultural Revolution in our country!’” Three years of natural disasters in the early 1960s had ripped China of any form of material abundance. In fact, many people were living in extreme poverty. Told through an ordinary boy’s eyes, the story is set in the aftermath of the natural disasters and great famine and witnesses the ten years (1966-1976) of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Neighbors and colleagues were turned into class enemies overnight and the entire country became fanatical causing class wars and chaos.

Chen is three years old when the Cultural Revolution turns his world upside down. He sees his grandparents destroying old photos and any trace of a better life, he witnesses people being publicly beaten, among them Old Mr. Huang and his beloved neighbor Mrs. Liu; he sees his father sent off to a forest farm on the Russian border for re-education; he joins the Little Red Guard at school and works alongside peasants and soldiers; he quietly bears the sorrow of losing his grandfather, and plays tricks to make his grandmother smile in her depression at the loss of her husband and chickens.

Chen replicates the illustration style of Lian Huan Hua, literally translated as “linked pictures,” a predominant illustration style in China’s picture books up until the 1980s. The linked pictures successfully convey the sequence of the story even without the words. The artistic media of ink, brush and watercolor visually presents the details of real life scenes with historical and cultural authenticity. The intimacy of everyday family life alternates with the political uproar of national events on small frames and large pictures as the story unfolds. The black outlines with ink and brush of characters and the details of their facial expressions fill each page with intense emotions.
This hardcover book has 77 pages, 11.50"X10.25".

Children's Picture book in English for age: 5-12.

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