Underdog Stories in the Shadow of Empires

Dear all,

Michelle and Albert here. For this week we’re recommending two dazzling Taiwanese graphic novels.

One of the most distinctive features of Taiwanese graphic novels, comics, and children’s books is their sustained engagement with history. Taiwan is special in this way. Its storytellers are deeply interested in recovering, reworking, and rethinking the past. This has much to do with more than four decades of martial law, when stories were circulated underground, told in hushed tones. The years leading up to the lifting of martial law in 1987 were turbulent and hard-fought, and the victories unleashed a drive to tell one’s own story—along with a sharp awareness of how precious this freedom is.

The two books we want to highlight today wrestle with the long shadow of Japanese colonization. Both open with the image of American planes dropping bombs—an indelible memory for many Taiwanese of that generation. Both grapple with the shift from Japanese rule to the Kuomintang (KMT). Both se…