Growing Up under a Red Flag

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.

Ying Chang Compestine grew up in Wuhan, China during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which she has written about in her acclaimed novel Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party and this new picture book memoir. She graduated from Central China Normal University with a degree in English, then earned her Master's in Sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is an award-winning author of 25 books (fiction, picture books, and cookbooks), a leading national authority on Asian culture and cuisine, a former food editor for Martha Stewart's Whole Living magazine, and has taught writing and sociology in both the U.S. and China. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband.

Xinmei Liu was born and grew up in Shanghai, China and is inspired by vintage Chinese art and design. She earned her BFA from the Pratt Institute and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and now works as an award-winning freelance illustrator and publishing assistant. She has illustrated for the New York Times, New Yorker, NBC News, and Foreign Policy, among others, and her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in New York and Shanghai. She now lives in Indiana with her pet rabbit and cat. This is her first published book.