The Boy from Clearwater: Book 2 - by Pei-Yun Yu

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

The "glorious" sequel to Freeman Award-winning The Boy from Clearwater

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.

P R A I S E

★ "Yu, Zhou, and King bear glorious witness to little-known tragic history by empathetically spotlighting an everyday superhero who survived--and thrives."
-Booklist (starred)

★ "An accessible, timely account of Taiwan's struggles for democracy and human rights as experienced through a personal lens."
-Kirkus (starred)

"Triumphant and rewarding."
-Foreword

Review Quotes

"A truly special graphic biography... Reading this graphic novel was an amazing primer on Taiwanese history." - Mochi Magazine

[STAR] "An accessible, timely account of Taiwan's struggles for democracy and human rights as experienced through a personal lens." - Kirkus (starred)

[STAR] "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 the Author

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.

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.

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.