Review: The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

BUI AS A CHILD AND AS AN ADULT.

Over the weekend, I read an amazing graphic novel by Thi Bui called The Best We Could Do. It is a memoir of growing up Vietnamese American. She fled Vietnam with her family and went through Malaysia to the US.

• It is beautiful. She is an amazing illustrator, and her drawings have real emotion to them. The small details really are illuminating. For example, the pictures on the right show her as a young girl and then as a woman right after giving birth. Such amazing detail and so emotional. She jumps around in time, and so these two illustrations follow one another in the story.

• Lots of Vietnamese families were both northern and southern. In her case, her father was from the North and grew up quite poor. Her mother was from a richer family in the South. Class issues were extremely important in her parents’ relationship.

• Her father’s father joined the Viet Minh, despite being the son of a wealthy landowner. After the war, he came to Saigon and found his son but was unwilling to associate with him. Eventually, Bui’s family fled to Malaysia and then the US.

• Borders were more fluid than we understand. Her father’s mother was abandoned and eventually moved to China with a man and had more children with him. And her mother was born in Cambodia and lived there until it became too dangerous.

• I was surprised that her parents divorced (I probably shouldn’t have been), because I thought that societal pressure would keep them together even if the marriage wasn’t working.

• She goes to Vietnam with her mother and siblings, but her father never goes back (at least in the book). While back in Saigon, a neighbor has to remind her mother where the house was, because her memory is slightly off. I always thought that you would never forget where you lived, but thinking about where I have lived, I’m not sure that I could find all of them. I have no idea what street I lived on in my senior year in college.

The subject of the book is ultimately reconciling her story with her parent’s to better understand where she stands in her family, in America and in Vietnam. It is a hopeful story about her own child and whether he will take on the trauma that she incurred and continues to deal with. Luckily, her seems to be his own person.

Here is a good interview with the author. Here is her personal website. Another interview here.

I highly recommend the book.