THE BOY FROM CLEARWATER: BOOK 2
by Yu Pei-Yun, illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin, translated by Lin King
After his imprisonment in Green Island, Kun-lin struggles to pick up where he left off ten years earlier. He reconnects with his childhood crush Kimiko and finds work as an editor, jumping from publisher to publisher until finally settling at an advertising company. But when manhua publishing becomes victim to censorship, and many of his friends lose their jobs, Kun-lin takes matters into his own hands. He starts a children’s magazine, Prince, for a group of unemployed artists and his old inmates who cannot find work anywhere else. Kun-lin’s life finally seems to be looking up... but how long will this last?
Forty years later, Kun-lin serves as a volunteer at the White Terror Memorial Park, promoting human rights education. There, he meets Yu Pei-Yun, a young college professor who provides him with an opportunity to reminisce on his past and how he picked himself up after grappling with bankruptcy and depression. With the end of martial law, Kun-lin and other former New-Lifers felt compelled to mobilize to rehabilitate fellow White Terror victims, forcing him to face his past head-on. While navigating his changing homeland, he must conciliate all parts of himself – the victim and the savior, the patriot and the rebel, a father to the future generation and a son to the old Taiwan – before he can bury the ghosts of his past.
Type: Graphic Novel
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Publication: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781646143726
Type: Graphic Novel
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Publication: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781646143733
PRAISE
★ “The extraordinary triumvirate—writer Yu, artist Zhou, and translator King (an enviable polyglot fluent in Taiwanese Hoklo, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and English)—reunite to finish what they began with the first volume. Exquisite, intricate graphics again capture the titular boy’s remarkable, long life… Yu, Zhou, and King bear glorious witness to little-known tragic history by empathetically spotlighting an everyday superhero who survived—and thrives.”
—Booklist (starred)
About Yu Pei-Yun
Yu Pei-Yun graduated from the Department of Foreign Language, National Taiwan University and holds a doctoral degree in Human Science from Ochanomizu University, Japan. Currently teaching at the Graduate Institute of Children's Literature at National Taitung University, she is devoted to the studies of Children's Literature and Culture. Yu also writes, translates, critiques, curates exhibitions about and plans the publication of children's literature.
About Zhou Jian-Xin
Zhou Jian-Xin holds a master's degree from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Children's Literature at National Taitung University.
About Lin King
Lin King is a writer and translator from Taipei, Taiwan. Her work has appeared in publications including Boston Review, Joyland, Asymptote, and Columbia Journal, and has won the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She translates from Mandarin Chinese and Japanese to English, and her translation of Yang Shuang-zi's Taiwan Travelogue is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.
