Propaganda and Memory in Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié’s A Chinese Life

A Chinese Life is a graphic autobiography first published in France as Une vie chinoise in three separate volumes between 2009 and 2011. With a single volume English translation appearing in 2012, the work has reached a global audience and speaks to a growing interest in the graphic narrative form as a mode through which comics artists are able to explore questions of identity, politics, and memory. Documenting the life of a Communist Party member who faces severe personal adversity and struggles to maintain his faith in Party ideals, A Chinese Life is a work that addresses issues of history and memory on both personal and political levels. The result is a provocative, sometimes unsatisfying, account that speaks to larger underlying problems of cultural memory and narrating Chinese history, particularly as this history is translated and negotiated across national and political borders.