The Best We Could Do
2017
- vietnam war
- biography
- vietnamese americans
- graphic novels
- refugees
- vietnamese personal narratives
- comic books, strips
- nonfiction
- memoir
- history of vietnam
The story
*The Best We Could Do*, the debut graphic novel memoir by Thi Bui, is an intimate look at one family's journey from their war-torn home in Vietnam to their new lives in America. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui's story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent — the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. *The Best We Could Do* brings to life her journey of understanding and provides inspiration to all who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.
What it’s like
Loose ink and wash in muted browns, greys and warm sepia, with panels that drift into full-page spreads when memory swells, give this book the feel of a family album opened slowly on a rainy afternoon. Its voice is quiet and reflective, moving between a Vietnam of heat, monsoon rain and wartime fear and an American present of cramped apartments and early motherhood. Pages are dense with text, so it asks for unhurried reading in a window seat or at a kitchen table. Violence is part of the history: wartime fear, a dangerous sea crossing and refugee camps appear, and some scenes of death and loss are rendered directly, though never gratuitously and with little gore. The emotional register is melancholy but tender, and its arc follows a daughter learning what her parents sacrificed by becoming a parent herself. It suits readers drawn to memoir, personal history, immigrant stories and graphic novels that treat the form as literature, especially anyone who wants something thoughtful and humane rather than light.
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