Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China, Hardcover

Descriere

A graphic memoir like no other: the true story of a marriage in China that spanned the twentieth century, told in vibrant, original paintings and prose by the now ninety-five-year-old author. Rao Pingru was a twenty-six-year-old soldier when he saw Mao Meitang, a girl he'd known in childhood who had grown up to be a beautiful woman--the woman his father had arranged for him to marry. One glimpse of her through a window as she put on lipstick was enough to capture Rao's heart, the moment that sparked a union that would last almost sixty years. Our Story is their epic romance told through Rao's paintings and accompanying text. We see Rao and Mao through the decades, in both poverty and good fortune--looking for work, opening a restaurant, moving cities, mending shoes, raising their children, and being separated for seventeen years by the government when Rao is sent to a labor camp. As they age, China undergoes extraordinary growth, political turmoil, and cultural change. When Mao passes away in 2008, Rao memorializes his wife and their relationship the only way he knows how: through painting. In an outpouring of love and grief, he puts it all on paper. It's a tale at once tragic and inspiring, of enduring love and simple values, an old-fashioned story that unfolds in a nation rapidly becoming modern. Spanning 1923 to 2008, Our Story is a truly singular graphic memoir.