Book Talk | Growing Up Under a Red Flag by Xinmei Liu

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About Growing Up Under a Red Flag: A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution

A stirring and magnificently illustrated picture-book memoir of the author's childhood during the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Ying Chang Compestine was a young girl in 1966 when Mao launched his Cultural Revolution to reclaim power and eliminate non-communist values in the country. His army began punishing and arresting people who didn't agree with him, foreign reading material was banned, and children were all required to dress in uniform and carry the Little Red Book of Mao's teachings. It was a time of fear, mayhem, and scarcity that lasted until Mao's death ten years later, when Ying was thirteen. Through those ten harrowing years, Ying's parents found ways to secretly educate her and allow her dreams of visiting America to stay vibrant. Now she brings her childhood story and China's history to life in this absorbing and beautiful picture book.

Xinmei Liu is the illustrator of Growing Up Under a Red Flag, her debut picture book in the US. She was born in Shanghai in 1993 and currently lives in Indiana. As a freelance illustrator, she created art for clients like The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, Foreign Policy, Amazon Publishing and others. She also translates and/or edits comics by Chinese cartoonists for the publisher Paradise Systems. She has a cat named Tyga. catmoverart.net

Yao Xiao is a writer and illustrator based in New York City. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and the author of graphic novel Everything Is Beautiful, And I’m Not Afraid, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Her illustrations and writing have been published in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Catapult, Lit Hub, and Autostraddle. Yao Xiao currently teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City where she lives and creates.