Faye Yan Zhang is a visual artist and filmmaker, working primarily in comics art and documentary video. She was born in a mining town in China and grew up in the American Midwest before continuing her education on the East Coast. Currently, she is based in the United Kingdom, studying visual anthropology at the University of Manchester. Her works have appeared in the Harvard Advocate, the Lampoon, Plain China, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, American Chordata, and Black Warrior Review. She has held fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution and Yaddo in Saratoga Springs.
The story:
After the Chinese Communist Revolution, healthcare reform was implemented across the countryside; the “Barefoot Doctor” program trained men and women from peasant backgrounds to provide medical care within rural communities. By the 1980s, the rural cooperative healthcare system was phased out, whereupon many barefoot doctors returned to agriculture, became village doctors, or (a few) attended medical school. Now, former barefoot doctors are elderly and rely on state pensions for their livelihoods. Apart from their propagandistic image as revolutionary icons, the history and testimony of barefoot doctors is neglected by discourse, media, and art.
Faye will create a graphic novel as well as a website incorporating documentary video, text, visual art, photography, and testimonies based on the lives of barefoot doctors. Part of the work will be based on an unpublished memoir written by her grandmother, who was a barefoot doctor as a young woman.
Ambition:
Faye plans to continue creating work in comics and documentary video, while working as an educator and researcher in the field of anthropology with a focus on China.
Follow Faye on Twitter and Instagram.
www.fayeyanzhang.com