I don’t often read graphic novel memoirs, but I always make an exception for Levine Querido – the publisher of The Boy from Clearwater. I really loved Book 1 and so I’ve been waiting to dive into Book 2. Keep reading this book review of The Boy from Clearwater Book 2 for my full thoughts.
Summary
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.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
Some of my favorite themes of The Boy from Clearwater Book 2 were the exploration of censorship as well as ambition. For Kun-lin he feels as if he’s already starting ten years behind. Because of his imprisonment, he takes life on head first throwing himself into this ambition. How does he re-integrate back into a changing society? Not only is the foundation of society different, but it’s continuously in flux as well as the growing censorship with the progress of industrialization and globalization. He is marked by his past and unable to escape whether it be in job prospects or feeling like he’s constantly behind.
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The Boy from Clearwater Book 2 examines the booms and lulls of art. How dangers art can be as well as the ways in which we fight back. We witness history in the making paired with the rush of ambition. In this second book, I was also struck by the drawing style and the use of color. With snippets of the present, it makes me appreciate the scope and the scale of the book even more so. If you love graphic novels, memoirs, and are curious about this time in Taiwan’s history, you have to read these books! Find The Boy from Clearwater Book 2 on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop. org, & Blackwells.