We Served the People: My Mother's Stories

by Emei Burell

A collection of moving stories passed from mother to daughter recounting life during China’s Cultural Revolution.

In China, an entire generation’s most formative years took place in remote rural areas when city-kids were sent to the countryside to become rusticated youth and partake in Mao’s mandated Great Leap Forward.

Debut cartoonist Emei Burell breathes new life into the stories her mother shared with her of growing up during mid-1960s Communist China. In an inspiring tale, her mother recounts how she ended up as one of the few truck-driving women during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement, which sought to increase agricultural outreach and spur social and ideological change amongst youth.

Burell’s stunning illustrations honor her mother’s courage, strength, and determination during a decade of tremendous political upheaval, where millions of lives were lost, and introduces us to a young Burell in a new era of self-discovery.

Genres: Graphic Novels, History, Nonfiction, Comics, Memoir, China, Biography

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 2020

About the author

I'm a Swedish illustrator and cartoonist currently studying at The Animation Workshop in Denmark.


With a focus on illustration and visual development, my work is a playful combination of the western comics and Asian influences. I love working with dynamic compositions, evocative pastel colors and first and foremost - humor.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of one woman's perseverance as she navigates the "rustification" of China during the Cultural Revolution of the late 60's and 70's. During this time period, all teaching in schools was halted even though children still went to school. After a few years, teenagers from the cities were forced to work in rural farms on the other side of China. Burrell's mother tells how she survived this period and how she recovered her lost education, primarily educating herself while everyone around her sat listlessly. It's very eyeopening into how the common man lived in China during the period. It's also inspiring how Burrell's mother continued to better herself in a system set up for her to fail.

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presented with a pile of horse manure to move, some people just stand and bemoan their bad luck, but as in the old joke, certain people will grab a shovel and start digging with gusto, convinced that "there must to be a pony in here somewhere." When she found herself caught up in Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and shipped from her family home in Beijing to a rubber plantation 2,500 miles away, Emei Burell's teenage mother, Yuan, reached for a shovel.

With great determination and a little luck Yuan managed to wrangle education in skills that lifted her past a lifetime of toting latex and hoeing fields and eked out an engineering degree from a cobbled together remote learning study regimen that led to study abroad. It's a Horatio Alger tale set in Communist China.

This is one of those books I wish were twice as long. I wanted more time with Yuan and her stories.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for the 2020 Asian Readathon, Challenge Three: Read a book featuring an Asian character or written by an Asian author who is different from you. The author is Swedish and her mother, the narrator and main character, is Chinese, which is different from me!
This is available on hoopla, which you can access with a library card!
I think work like this is really important, it helps preserve individual stories and experiences during history and the Cultural Revolution in China is a time that I think a lot of people (Americans specifically) aren't very familiar with. It's important to go into this understanding that this about one person and that there a lot more stories to hear about this time period, that it is not at all meant to be generalized.
Highly recommend!!

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll never forget meeting Betty Reid Soskin - an African American "Rosie" during WWII. She was a consultant for the Rosie the Riveter Museum in Richmond, CA, along with other Rosies. She recalled that some of the white Rosies described their time as full of freedom and fun. That was not Betty's experience as she faced discrimination and disrespect. But she emphasized that both experiences could be true at the same time.

Most of the accounts - both fictional and not - of China's Cultural Revolution describe a time of terror, chaos, deprivation, and numbing sadness. In this graphic novel account, the author's mother describes her time being sent from the city to the country as a series of plucky can-do adventures during her preteen years to her late 20s. Not that she faced no hardship - just that her stories are more about her ability to strive and work hard and overcome challenging situations. It could be that this is what she chooses to remember, but has edited out other darker things - or maybe this was the truth of her experience. Either way, I enjoyed the art and the storytelling.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing, personal story of the Cultural Revolution in China and the Down to the Countryside Movement. I certainly knew some of the big-picture elements, but reading the story of these kids denied their education and driven out of their homes is heartbreaking, and hearing about a woman who resisted the prejudice of her time is heartwarming. (I want to know what happened next too!)

Well worth reading just to learn more about this historical event, but the story will touch you personally as well.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

What to we, in the United States, know about the Cultural Revolution other than it happened in China under Chairman Mao? Not too much. That is why this slow, meticulous graphic novel of a young girls life disrupted because of it, is so interesting.

The author interviews her mother who was young when all the children who were supposed to go to university were sent off to collective farms because that is what Mao wanted. So, as a 16 year old she had to work on farms, hard labor. This was supposed to teach children values.

At first, this is very depressing, but Emei's mother takes it all in stride and goes after the prize she can, be it being the only driver, or taking remote classes so that she can get a degree, once she returns to the city after the cultural revolution is over.

Told in a straight forward way, with stark illustrations.

Well done.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know little about the Cultural Revolution in China, and I didn't know anything about the Down to the Countryside movement that began in 1966. The author did a great job telling her mother's story of her experience as a 16 year old who was sent to work on a collective farm far from her family in Beijing. Yuan ended up working at the collective for ten years until Mao died and the movement was discontinued. Yuan was an incredibly determined young woman who worked hard to improve her life by pursuing the education that was interrupted in 7th grade by the revolution.

This short graphic novel is worth reading as a short primer on one woman's experience during the revolution and approximately a decade afterward. Burrell chose to depict this as the author interviewing her mother about her life and telling the story in her mother's words. There are essentially no efforts to criticize the revolution for ruining the lives of millions of people. Burell notes several times that her mother wanted an education badly and felt her ten years at the farm were wasted, but that is as strong as the criticism gets. A one page afterward states that some of the youth sent to the countryside during the revolution look back with no regret, but the majority feel the hardships should not be forgotten or glorified.

I think the thing that surprised me most about Yuan's story is that she had to get permission from her work supervisors to study at university. Her supervisors had power over her personal life in a way those of us in the West can't comprehend. The story ends with Yuan leaving for Sweden as a woman in her mid thirties. The reader already knows Yuan raised her family in Sweden, so I was sorry the story didn't relate anything after Yuan left China.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won't claim to know more about China's Cultural Revolution after reading this volume, I don't really know anything about how or why it came about, what happened afterwards, or any of the politics of China. Instead this book is all about how it affected the ordinary people, specifically Emei Burrell's mother, watching her deal with having to leave her family to go work on a plantation, try to return home, and because of a curious mind and stubborn dedication to learning she's able to pull herself away from her peers. Sometimes she gets lucky and her superiors notice how hard-working she is, sometimes she has to lie or rebel against them to attend a class, but always the pervading message of the book is how upward mobility is almost impossible- and the only way to get it is to work your ass off for little to no guaranteed reward.

Much of this book is more prose than comic, with little illustrations or old photgraphs instead of a traditional 'comic'. But there are still big sections of what you assume when you read a comic, little bits of panelling. Not the most inventive use, but really the subject matter is what's important. The art is a way to convey the information clearly and aid in communicating emotion through the images while the narration is left for facts and details. But I was surprised at how invested I was in the life of this one woman, and how moving her hardships were.

[Clint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burrell tells her mother’s stories of perseverance and determination during her forced “rustification” to rural China amidst the decade-long Cultural Revolution, and her striving to make up for lost time in the years afterwards. Her recollection is critical enough that I can’t imagine this being published in China, but it’s not without whimsy or memories of pleasant times too. Similarly, while petty tyrants and bureaucratic headaches act as impediments along the way, there’s also plenty of well-intentioned folks that help and encourage her. Burrell’s art is charming and beautifully pastoral; the primarily neutral/beige color palette unexpectedly works to evoke a feeling of the era without being dull.

[Alex Andrasik · Rating 3 out of 5]

My reaction to this book is sort of...."eh." I think it illustrates that not everyone's life story necessarily warrants being turned into a piece of literature or other media. Or maybe anyone's life story *can be* treated thus, but you sort of need to have something to say about it, or an interesting way of framing it, to ensure that it's worth folks' time as more than sort of a minor item of edification. I don't mean to be too harsh; Burell tells her mother's story with evident affection and care. But I'm left wondering how her story is notably different than probably millions of others that played out in China during the Cultural Revolution, or, on the other hand, how her story might be considered especially representative or emblematic of some higher truth of those times. There is some mild criticism of the Chinese state as it existed in the 70s and 80s, maybe some mild indication of the author's or her subject's attitudes about socialism or communism as whole systems, but nothing is stated terribly plainly or pointedly in a way that says, "Hey, here's a point of view." I'm left intrigued by the notion of "youth rustification" and the emergence of "TV-University" (decades before anyone in the west had an inkling about MOOCs!) but with no sense of the lasting impact of either of those phenomena. I'm left with an impression of a corrupt bureaucracy (what was at the root of all the men who got in the way of Yuan's studies - misogyny? Envy? It never really says) that nevertheless produced a number of good people who got out of Yuan's way and helped her along. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this book.

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Why in the world did I come here? Maybe I really shouldn’t have left.”

This is a series of biographical stories from the author’s mother with an emphasis on her time during the Chinese cultural revolution (from 1966-76) and her part in living through “the down to the countryside” movement.

The art work is of a reasonable standard with a decent layout too. I understand why this was written and it is obviously a nice tribute and mark of respect to the author’s mother, but in terms of engaging and/or original content I would say that most of this isn’t anything that would be of particular interest beyond the author’s immediate family.

[André Habet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated this personal insight into China's Cultural Revolution. Burell does an amazing job of illustrating her mother's life starting from just prior to the Revolution's commencement and ending with her departure from China more than a decade later. My two major critiques of this book are about its plot development and form. We actually move fairly quickly away from the ten-year period of the Revolution, and going into this book I thought we were going to spend more time in that period. However, I did appreciate learning about how Burell's mother recovered her life, and I completely agree with Burell's assertion that her Mom is amazing, possessing that necessary mixture of resilience, and perseverance required of many women similarly condescended to, and barred from upward mobility. With regard to form, my issue is that much of this comic is delivered through exposition. We hardly get any fully developed scenes, so the rhythm of the book never really takes off. It feels very educational in tone though there's not much analysis present regarding Burell or her mother's insights on the significance of the Revolution to them or either of their generations. I REALLY appreciated the concluding note we're left on regarding the revolution though. That is, that for those who didn't experience it, we should not glorify it and engage in an erasure of the removal of these children's autonomy. For myself, the glorification stems from a national movement that to some extent put people in positions that connected them in some way to nature, and there's something deeply romantic to me about that in this time of the Anthropocene's reckoning. I know it's inaccurate, and I want to read more of these first-hand accounts to see if any of those who experienced the Revolution felt that it facilitated some sort of [re]new connection with land.

[Klara A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emei is so talented! Beautiful illustrations and an amazing story, told by her mother, from her childhood and young adulthood in China in the 60s during the Cultural Revolution. Learning so much new from this book, and it's a fun and easy way to learn through a personal story such as this. I also love the style of the illustrations.

[Vickie Van Vliet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story from one women's perspective during the cultural revolution in China during the 1970s and 1980s. At the beginning of the graphic novel, there are a few pages of text that give background information on the cultural revolution. It was well done and gave enough information that I knew what was going on. The rest of the graphic novel was done really well. The language is simple however it manages to get the point across.

[Julio Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro me recordó a Cambios, de Mo Yan. Básicamente es la historia de cómo la mamá de la autora tuvo una serie de golpes de suerte que, combinados con esfuerzo, la hicieron pasar de ser una zhiqing (joven rústica, creo) a ser una ingeniera en Suecia. Esta interesante novela gráfica explora lo que implicaba que tu destino dependiera de otros en la China de la Revolución Cultural, aunque tiene una postura muy neutra sobre el asunto. La recomiendo.

[Ronny Alexandersson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastiskt liv och extra spännande att läsa då jag känner Yin…

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully told story of an inspiring young woman in the face of oppression honestly. I wish this type of history was talked about more and shared with the rest of the world.

[Abby Nunns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories of that time period that should be learned by all

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young cartoonist learns about her mother's life growing up in China's Cultural Revolution in the biographical graphic novel: We Served The People: My Mother's Stories.

From 1966-1976, millions of children were uprooted from their homes and sent to work in rural populations of China. The idea was to strip away the last vestiges of Capitalism from Communist China. One way to do that was to move children from modern cities to work on farms and plantations. The idea was that this most simple was of life would make the citified children of China less Westernized. But it actually had a reverse affect on Emei Burell's mother.

We Served The People is a first person account of a Chinese young woman's time working for a rubber plantation nearly 800 miles away from her family in Beijing. As one of the only women taught to drive and operate trucks and tractors, 'Mom' learns about engineering first hand. This opens her up to wanting to get her degree in engineering when she was finally allowed to return to the capital city to be reunited with her family.

I feel like there's a sequel to this story because there's this huge build-up towards getting Emei Burell's mother to Sweden where she will eventually continue her college education in the sciences. But before she ends up in Sweden, the story ends. Yet, I really feel that Mom Burell was just getting started.

For a book advertising the impact of the Cultural Revolution on a person, We Served The People was more passive. Red Scarf Girl is an excellent prose account of Ji-Li Jiang's mis-education at the hands of a program that experts agree was a giant step backwards for China. Jiang's memoir tells more of how she had to change whereas this graphic novel is more about the aftermath of the lost years of education at the hands of the Mao Zedong school of thought.

The stories in the book were very interesting. I just expected more accounts during the Cultural Revolution instead of afterwards. Emei's mother spent almost a decade away from her family. But not even half of this book is devoted to that time of separation. I was just left wanting more.

One thing that I was quite upset at having too much of is something I mentioned recently in another review. It's the waste of paper. In between the stories, BOOM! Studios and Archaia put 2-4 solid read pages as dividers. I'm sure that the cost of red ink isn't cheap. Plus, there's the fact that the first 10 pages of this book are blank as well. If you had omitted all of that, you would have shaved 30 pages from the book and probably could've sold it for under $20.

Comic book publishers have got some great stories, such as this one, to tell. But in order to survive this hostile economy, brought upon thanks to a pandemic and exorbitant production costs, changes to how our graphic novels are printed must occur. Please, don't go digital only! But consider trimming those blank pages in order to make graphic novels of historical importance, like We Served The People more affordable.

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burell's simple line drawings manage to evoke great facial expressions in her characters, especially in her mother. Her steadfast determination to seek out an education comes across clearly in from her eyebrows to her posture. A clear theme in We Served the People: My Mother's Stories is that Yuan's accomplishments are not hers alone. She is helped along the way by a fellow driver, her friend that nags her to apply to TV university, her mother who took notes and recorded lectures when she was unable to attend class, a kindly official who values education and finally her uncle who helps her receive a visa to Sweden. Yuan's determination and perseverance was not enough on its own to overcome the conditions of communist China, she relied on help and even had moments of luck that propel her forward. Another important theme in the book is that it is never too late to continue your education and follow your dreams. Yuan doesn't start her bachelor's degree until her mid-30s. My only complaint about the book is that it was too short! I would have loved it to go on longer so the reader could learn about the challenges Yuan faces in Sweden.  

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Maus: Un survivant raconte, tome 1: Mon père saigne l'histoire and Grass, We Served the People is a memoir where the author interviews the person recounting their history (in this case her mom). I really don't know anything about China's Cultural Revolution, so I really liked getting to see her perspective as she grew up in the middle of it. It's also really hard to read this and not think of current events, where so many people's teens and early adulthood are being rocked by the pandemic. Burell's mom is inspirational and I'm so glad her story was told.

[Rach · Rating 3 out of 5]

A graphic depiction of the author’s mother’s history growing up in China during the cultural revolution and her eventual immigration to Sweden. Although it’s interesting to hear stories from that time, it felt like all the details were glossed over. I didn’t feel the pain or difficulty she must have felt, everything seemed so matter of fact, like there was nothing to do about it so why dwell on it. I’ve read other books about this time and there was much more violence and oppression than appears in this book. I love the art style, and the idea of passing on the stories of our parents, I just wish I could have felt more passion. Vietnamerica is a graphic novel that is similar (describing one’s family history) and there is so much tension and emotion pouring out of that book.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a fascinating read. I learned about the The Great Leap Forward in school, but the Cultural Revolution is something I do not know much about. Emei Burrel does a great job of filling you in with enough information to understand the story, while also not having all this information dumped. The stories from her mother make you cheer her on throughout the book. You know that she ends up in Sweden, and she is talking to her daughter, Emei, but you’re still on the edge of seat, flipping the pages to see how everything worked out in the end. The art is also so beautifully done, and makes the story all the more compelling.

My mother was born in the 70’s and it was so interesting to think about what people were feeling in two very different places at the same time.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I feel a bit weird about rating this I think it is deserved. It’s hard to rate someone’s life but the way this was written really let me love it. I had never heard about any of the things talked about in the novel and I found it fascinating how much this women went through in her life. I loved how it alternated between paragraphs and comics. As well as putting in real photographs. I want to look more into this time in China.

[Soteralzobooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8

[L Rose Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We Served the People" is a personal and moving view into the Cultural Revolution; in particular, its effects on the "rusticated youth," teenagers whose lives and educations were upended when they were "encouraged" to relocate from China's largest cities to the remotest countryside.

Emei Burell brings to life the stories of her mother, Yuan, who at age 17 left Beijing for rural Yunnan, in the far south of China. Burell relates her mother's stories episodically, as she heard them growing up. Mother and daughter's combined storytelling is vivid and relatable, even to people (like me) with little to no knowledge of the time, or similar life experiences.

In addition to the tales of Yuan's decade in Yunnan, performing hard manual labor and driving trucks on a rubber plantation, we follow her back home to Beijing to experience life after Mao. She struggles to obtain first the high school education that she missed, and then pursues an engineering degree despite the attempts of her superiors to stop her. She's such a determined and amazing woman!

The narrative skirts around much of the larger history, impact, and atrocities of the Cultural Revolution. But it does so in an honest way: Yuan, like so many at the time, only knew about the hardships that she and her immediate peers experienced, supplemented by required propaganda reading and occasional news from home. While I would have liked more historical context between the narratives, I enjoyed the book's "slice-of-life" storytelling. So often, the lives of ordinary individuals are lost in larger tellings of history. I really appreciated the opportunity to peer into Yuan's world.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

With "We Served the People," cartoonist Emei Burell offers a charming, inspiring recounting of her mother's experience during China's Cultural Revolution. A young student in Beijing, she was removed from school and eventually sent to work at a rubber plantation as a result of Mao ZeDong's "Down to the Countryside" movement.

"We Served the People" captures her experience outwitting political bosses and doggedly pursuing an education, all in the face of obstacles--and real danger--from China's leadership. From becoming the first woman in her unit to drive a truck to attending "TV University," Burell's mother follows a patiently persistent path that eventually sees her emigrate to Sweden.

Burell's art uses thin lines and restrained washes of color to build a distinctive cast of characters. Her writing is subtle and often funny. Her mother, Yuan, thinks more than she speaks (understandable given the context), but she's never passive, and the book makes strong use of her good sense and determination.

I do feel Burrell could have done more to build a overarching narrative for the story as a whole. As written, the book shares an engaging series of memorable anecdotes, but they don't align to frame a larger picture of what Yuan's story means, beyond the fact that she's "the coolest person [Burrell] knows." After reading "We Served the People," though, that conclusion is hard to argue.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book crossed my desk so I decided to pick it up. It's a graphic memoir of a sorts -- the author illustrates her mother's experience as a youth in China during the Cultural Revolution and Down to the Countryside movement during the 1970s. I had a vague understanding of what these things were, and how they impacted China and the world, but this memoir sheds some more light on it. As she was preparing to graduate from middle school, the government was starting to relocate urban youth to the countryside, so they could contribute to rural industries, and she ended up on a rubber plantation far to the south of her home in Beijing. Her own work ethic allowed her to pass through the ranks and find herself a comfortable enough spot in the industrial complex. She felt her lack of education keenly as the revolution came to an end, and worked hard to make it up, eventually succeeding in navigating the dizzying bureaucracy to achieve her degree. The story does describe the faults of the systems put in place to control the population and economy in China, but she also clearly feels affectionate toward her homeland, feeling conflicted when she eventually gets the opportunity to go abroad. This is a lovely story of a woman finding success in a country that seems determined to curtail any ambition.

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always feel a little bit more cautious about stories of/from Chinese historical moments...mostly...what's the angle? And this one made me scratch my head a bit. Was the Cultural Revolution very difficult and devestating? Or was it more of a major inconvenience. There are enough people with lives shaped by it that both of the those things and many things somewhere in the middle must be truths for someone, but this book kind of tried to play both sides -- it felt like it was trying to tell something true, but also not to offend. Or maybe that's just really how it was experienced by this family! I dunno -- I'm being vague. But the just fine illustrations and the sort of overly documentary nature of the narrative made it a little bit of a clunker, all told. :O

[Brigid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting account of the author's mother's experiences during the Cultural Revolution in China. She had to leave her home in Beijing for a remote area of the country - with little likelihood she could ever move back - and work on a rubber plantation. She has a lot of spirit, though, and manages to overcome the obstacles in front of her not only during her years in the countryside but also later, when she does manage to return to Beijing only to wind up in a dead-end job. Through grit and luck she manages to get a college education and winds up, after training as an engineer, moving to Sweden at the end of the book. It's a truly fascinating, and very readable glimpse at everyday life during an extraordinary time in Chinese history.