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The Best We Could Do

(The Best We Could Do #1-3)

Thi Bui

4.38 · Rating details · 28,869 ratings · 4,193 reviews

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 ...more

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Hardcover, 329 pages

Published March 7th 2017 by Harry N. Abrams

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Oct 22, 2018 Zoë rated it really liked it

I read this for my Asian-American studies class, and our discussion made me enjoy this book even more! A school book I actually enjoyed? I know! I'm surprised too!
At first, I wasn't too big of a fan of the art style. However, after analyzing why Thi Bui illustrated it the way she did, I think it was perfect for the story. Truthfully, I don't know too much about the Vietnam War except for the few things I remember from 12th grade history class. This was a wonderfully intimate look at her family's ...more

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Jun 16, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Shelves: graphic-comic, biography-autobiography-memoir, non-fiction, history

I still remember how I felt the first time I read the graphic memoir "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant", by Roz Chast. I wanted the world to read it...
I laughed. I cried. I laughed and cried at the same time! And by the way.... I felt it should be required reading for anyone who had aging parents! Both my parents were dead - and I still got value 'as' a mother: not wanting to leave my own daughters a mess to deal with after I die.
Roz Chast's graphic memoir TRANSFORMED the word GRAPH ...more

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Jan 22, 2017 Mischenko rated it it was amazing

This book is featured on Throwback Thursday @ https://readrantrockandroll.com/2018/...

I picked this up from Netgalley as soon as I learned about it. I love reading graphic novels and this one piqued my interest after reading the blurb. I had already read A Different Pond with my kids and loved that one, so I had a good feeling about The Best We Could Do.

This is an extremely moving graphic novel about a family’s immigration from Vietnam and how they do the best they can to make a living in a new ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Nat rated it it was amazing

Shelves: diverse-reads, graphic-novels, nonfiction, memoir, arc

The Best We Could Do brings to life author Thi Bui’s search for a better future while longing for a simpler past. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story explores the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family.

Alternating between the present, Bui's own childhood in California, and the lives of her parents amid the chaos of the Vietnam War, Bui explores the saga of her country while trying to understand the history of her parents and gr ...more

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Jun 19, 2021 Julie G rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic, good-morning-vietnam, california-dreaming, love-and-marriage, mommie-dearest

This graphic novel dropped like a napalm bomb on me.

Fitting, given the subject matter: a family's multi-generational struggle to live during tumultuous times in Vietnam and ultimately flee the country to take refuge in the United States.

It's a big book, one that took the author and illustrator, Thi Bui, years to complete, and it must have been painful to produce as well. In my opinion, this is not a graphic novel for children, nor is it YA. The author's father had a habit of scaring his kids wi This graphic novel dropped like a napalm bomb on me.

Fitting, given the subject matter: a family's multi-generational struggle to live during tumultuous times in Vietnam and ultimately flee the country to take refuge in the United States.

It's a big book, one that took the author and illustrator, Thi Bui, years to complete, and it must have been painful to produce as well. In my opinion, this is not a graphic novel for children, nor is it YA. The author's father had a habit of scaring his kids with harrowing true stories of rape and murder during the Vietnam War, and several of them are shared here. This is a story for adults, and not all adults will be comfortable with this material, either.

Personally, I've been fascinated by the situation in Vietnam since I was in college, and I was surprised and comforted to find that the author, who was born in that country and had to leave it as a child with her family, doesn't really understand the conflicts in Vietnam much better than I do. Even after doing independent research and interviewing family members, she had an observation like this one, after talking to her father:

Wait. Does he hate the general or is he defending him? Did he like communism or not? The contradiction in my father's stories troubled me for a long time. But so did the oversimplifications and stereotypes in American versions of the Vietnam War.

Yes, it's all (still) confusing to me, too, and I think Ms. Bui was brilliant at capturing this confusion well in the color palette she used for a war-torn Vietnam: orange, black and white.

The greatest surprise for me in this illustrated memoir was the author's discovery that war only exaggerates the instances of dysfunction and “generational sins” in families. Meaning: many of us struggle with these issues within our families, regardless of the presence of war, but in big drama you are more clearly able to see big trauma. I learned a few painful lessons while reading this, and I can only express gratitude toward Thi Bui for having the courage to share the findings from her “time travels.” She journeys, bravely, from her recent past, back to grandparents, on to parents, back again to the present day, then starts all over again. The “starts” and “stops” are sometimes jarring, and I'm not sure I'd call this story “pleasurable,” but I'd certainly call it valuable.

...more

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May 30, 2021 emma rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-ya, nonfiction, memoir, graphic-novel, diverse, 4-stars, recommend, reviewed, project-aapi, owned

somehow the art isn't even the most stunning part of this book.

and seriously, look at the art. that's saying something.

this is just a stunner and that's all there is to it!

bottom line: read it already.

------------
pre-review

i'm a simple girl. ali wong recommends, i read.

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taking lily's idea and reading only books by asian authors this month!

book 1: the incendiaries
book 2: last night at the telegraph club
book 3: dear girls
book 4: sigh, gone
book 5: frankly in love
book 6: emergency contact ...more

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Jan 18, 2017 Taryn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: received-from-publisher, netgalley, graphic-novels

Empathetic, honest, and emotional. A gorgeously illustrated memoir of a woman who looks to the past to understand her parents and her complicated relationship with them. In 1978, Thi Bui's parents fled South Vietnam with three young children and one on the way. The Best We Could Do tells the story of them growing up in Vietnam, raising a family in the midst of the Vietnam War, their harrowing nighttime escape by boat, and the difficulties of starting a new life in the United States. The tale be

FAMILY is now something I have created, and not just something I was born into.

Bui reveals some instances from growing up that widened the gap between parent and child and kept her from feeling safe and secure. Once her parents' backgrounds are revealed, these stories have a different sheen to them. We see how their pasts shaped who they are and influenced what lessons they felt were important to impart. Bui's mother and father had completely different childhoods. Their backgrounds were so different that I was really interested to see what circumstances brought them together. Her mother grew up in a wealthy household in the relative safety of South Vietnam, while her father grew up in poverty in conflict-ridden North Vietnam. We get to see them grow up as young people with hopes and dreams, and then later as adults who have suffered immense heartache together.

We weren’t any of the pieces on the chessboard. We were more like ants scrambling out of the way of giants, getting just far enough from danger to resume the business of living.

The specifics of Vietnam's history with colonization and conflict are given for context, but more importantly, this book shows what it's like to live day-to-day in those conditions. War and its effects don't stop when foreign troops leave and the headlines cease. I appreciated a part where Thi tries to figure out her father’s allegiances after listening to another one of his contradictory stories because I was struggling with the same thing. It was a good reminder that things aren't always so easily simplified.

My two favorite types of graphic novels are historical fiction and memoirs with historical relevance--images add so much power to these type of narratives. The illustrations are lovingly rendered. So much of the artwork impacted me, but my favorites pages were her parents' wedding, a young Bố hiding underground, and the full spread of her father gazing up at Orion’s belt. Those pages felt like whole stories in themselves. On one page there are actual photographs that were taken when her family arrived at a refugee camp in Malaysia. The contrast between the family I'd come to care for through Thi's loving illustrations and the impersonal identification shots was striking. We see so many photos of refugees and immigrants on the news, it can be easy to forget that they all have a story.

In the introduction, Bui writes about a few of the titles she came up with before settling on The Best We Could Do. Just typing the title out makes my eyes well up with tears, so I’d say it was a perfect choice! It's the story of one family's journey from Vietnam and the obstacles they overcame, but it's also so much more. It's so relevant in a time where immigration and how it should be handled is on the forefront of so many people's minds. We see firsthand why someone might make the tough decision to leave behind everything to start a new life and the incredible sacrifices they must make to provide a better life for their families. Most everyone will be able to relate to some aspect of Bui's story: family, home, identity. What makes us who we are? What we pass on to the next generation? Why is it so unsettling when our view of our parents evolves? It only takes a couple of hours to read, but it's so powerful. When I finished reading, I immediately wanted to read it again. If you're on the fence, you can preview a few of the spreads via 'Look Inside' on Amazon, the publisher's page, or visit Thi Bui's art blog.

(See full spread & more at Abramsbooks.com)

*Vietnamese for Mom and Dad

--------------
I received this book for free from Netgalley and Abrams ComicArts. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It will be available for purchase on March 7, 2017.

...more

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Mar 10, 2017 Dave Schaafsma rated it really liked it

Shelves: gn-memoir, vietnam

I read this graphic memoir in one sitting and found it affecting as a story and lovely to look at. It's a story that is familiar, the desire to understand the past of one's parents, and in becoming a parent, finding yourself in a better place to do so. Her parents divorced, but to help her understand the past, and tell the tale, they came together to help her. She did lots of secondary research in addition to talking with her parents.

And since it is about Vietnamese parents who became refugees e ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Warda rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-reads, author-of-colour

This was...difficult to read.
Just by the first chapter I knew this was something that would make me uncomfortable, forcing me to confront issues of my own that I glanced over, a nagging thought I couldn't face, because my anxiety wouldn't allow it.

At its heart, it's a story about family. The author explores what it means to be a child of immigrant parents. As our main character recently became a mother, she sets off to understand her parents and fix a relationship that involves unresolved traum This was...difficult to read.
Just by the first chapter I knew this was something that would make me uncomfortable, forcing me to confront issues of my own that I glanced over, a nagging thought I couldn't face, because my anxiety wouldn't allow it.

At its heart, it's a story about family. The author explores what it means to be a child of immigrant parents. As our main character recently became a mother, she sets off to understand her parents and fix a relationship that involves unresolved trauma, miscommunication of the silent kind, but has bottled up and infected their being in toxic ways as both the parents and the children as both are victims of war.
So we are then educated by stories the parents reluctantly share with their daughter and we get to the bottom of why the parents are the way they are.

This has always been my fear when it comes to having children of my own, I guess. There will always be some type of pain that has not been dealt with, translating and shaping itself into an unhealthy form and that unresolved issue then gets passed on to your child and then it translates into whatever form it becomes for them. It's this vicious cycle, a loop you try and claw out of, but don't know how to.

I appreciated the light it shed on the Vietnam War which isn't something I'm familiar with, what it means to be a refugee, an immigrant, the hardship one goes through and the effect this all has and how relevant it is in our current times.
All this was told in a format that was slightly erratic, constant back and forth between timelines, introductions to families, musings of the main character, which is all paralleling to their lives, constantly having been hindered by tragic events. We're grasping their individual realities, to try and get a whole picture of this particular family. Darkness has shaped them this way and should they really be held against that? Can we blame them when the root cause of it all is a labyrinth?

It's a harrowing and resonating tale, it's introspective and it's a story that sheds light on not only what it means to be a refugee, but human. Making choices that are questionable but it's the only one they have. ...more

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Dec 03, 2017 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, biography-or-memoir, graphic-novel

Such an important and empathetic graphic memoir about Thi Bui's journey to understand her Vietnamese family and their immigration to the United States from South Vietnam. The Best We Could Do begins with Bui's foray into motherhood and how it reminds her of her mother's story and sacrifices. To cultivate a deeper comprehension of her family's past, she interviews her parents, travels back to Vietnam, and spends tons of time learning about the history of the war and her family's place within it. Such an important and empathetic graphic memoir about Thi Bui's journey to understand her Vietnamese family and their immigration to the United States from South Vietnam. The Best We Could Do begins with Bui's foray into motherhood and how it reminds her of her mother's story and sacrifices. To cultivate a deeper comprehension of her family's past, she interviews her parents, travels back to Vietnam, and spends tons of time learning about the history of the war and her family's place within it. These experiences help her create this moving, cinematic memoir that highlights her family's daring escape from a war-torn country, as well as their struggles to build new lives for themselves in the United States. She captures themes of displacement, intergenerational trauma, and how culture influences the ways we express or do not express our love for one another.

I appreciate The Best We Could Do so much for shedding light on an under-discussed lived experience. As a Vietnamese American who was born and raised in the United States, I learned about the Vietnam War in a sterilized, non-personal way in my history classes. Thus, I so love that Bui shows in beautiful imagery and meticulous detail the emotional, relational effects of the war. Holding this book felt like holding a work of art that someone spent hundreds and hundreds of hours creating. Bui's heartfelt compassion for her family's journey from Vietnam to the US shines in these pages, both through the amazing artwork and the research she did to put together his nuanced narrative.

Overall, I would recommend The Best We Could Do to anyone interested in history, the Vietnamese American experience, or graphic memoirs. Reading this book made me reflect on my own family - both of my parents came to the United States as adolescents - in challenging, meaningful ways. The educational curriculum in the US often erases the experiences of racism and discrimination we have experienced and continue to experience, so I appreciate Bui shedding light on those instances too. While I wish Bui had also touched on how she and her family have dealt with intergenerational trauma since coming to the US, perhaps that will serve as the foundation of her next highly-necessary book. ...more

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Jan 20, 2017 Sam rated it really liked it

Shelves: aty-challenge-2017, 2017-reads

A heartfelt, engaging, comprehensive illustrated memoir, The Best We Could Do really blew me away. I do not gravitate towards graphic novels as a format, but this book completely hooked me from the opening panels as Thi Bui embarks on her own journey of motherhood for the first time, and seeks to close the gap between herself and her parents by better understanding where she comes from and their own stories. She does incredible amounts of research and is able to distill years of history and emot A heartfelt, engaging, comprehensive illustrated memoir, The Best We Could Do really blew me away. I do not gravitate towards graphic novels as a format, but this book completely hooked me from the opening panels as Thi Bui embarks on her own journey of motherhood for the first time, and seeks to close the gap between herself and her parents by better understanding where she comes from and their own stories. She does incredible amounts of research and is able to distill years of history and emotion and anecdote into small illustrated panels, each one complex and powerful and detailed but also able to push the story along into the next image and idea. We embark on this journey through the Bui family history, starting with her parents' vastly different backgrounds and lives in Vietnam pre war, during the long destructive war pitting individuals and villages against each other as well as horrific losses from French and American involvement, and life as refugees in Malaysia and in the United States and how everyone truly did the best they could do to forge new lives, avoid hunger, and raise a family against difficult odds.

The renderings and text flow remarkably together: from Thi's narration and illustration, one gets the sense that they could not be separated in order for the larger Bui tale to be told for her, and so the format is necessary and revelatory. The drawings themselves are both simple and yet complicated, and have their own hurried urgency that helps establish the flow of the narrative. This is truly a memoir that meditates on what it means to belong - to people, to a place - and raises great questions about who all of us are as children of our parents, how our views of our parents as people evolve, and how roles shift once again if we perpetuate the cycle and have children of our own. Tie in its timeliness and relevance to a larger, social and political discussion of immigrants and refugees, a parallel to the horrors many from Syria, Somalia and other nations with intra and international conflict are facing today and the often strident response by those who would not wish to help or see those war torn people settled into their societies, and you have the makings of a major force in memoir today. Bui's memoir is at once intensely personal, but with huge potential for universal application and empathy. I would heartily recommend this to most readers: if you don't care for graphic novels at all, perhaps this isn't for you, but if you're like me and just don't gravitate towards that format, you may be surprised with The Best We Could Do, as it's so authentic and interesting and searing, it transcends its glorious individual parts and really might work for you on the level of a family history and a human face on the ongoing disscusion about immigration and belonging.

-received an ARC on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review thanks to Abrams. ...more

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Apr 01, 2017 Tatiana rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, non-fiction, graphic-novels, foreign-lands

3.5 stars

I really liked the art and I definitely learned a lot about Vietnam's history.

However it's a memoir. And, unfortunately, like with many memoirs, I often felt the author didn't dig deep enough or was reluctant to tell the whole truth (probably to, understandably, not hurt her parents). For all author's anger against her parents, she never quite articulated why she felt it. The narrative also was often unclear about certain events, especially how for all the talk about poverty, somehow he ...more

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May 27, 2018 Rincey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: poc-author, favorites

Totally cried while reading this. <3 <3

See me talk about this briefly in my May wrap up: https://youtu.be/ymb11Zcb248?t=23m51s ...more

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Aug 18, 2018 Lisa Vegan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, graphic-comics, non-fiction, history, orphaned-and-quasi-orphaned-kids, mental-health-illness, readbooks-female-author-or-illust, reviewed, 1-also-at-librarything, z2018

This book is San Francisco’s One City One Book for summer 2018 and I wanted to read it during this period. It’s a fast read and I was able to read it in a couple of days.

It’s a wonderful graphic biography book and interesting history book, and a fabulous book about parents & children and relationships, and trauma.

I’m always in awe of people who can take their pain and experiences and feelings and create writing/art and here there are both. For most of the book I particularly enjoyed the text, e ...more

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Mar 10, 2020 April (Aprilius Maximus) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“Family is now something I have created - and not just something I was born into.”

representation: own voices Vietnamese & Vietnamese American rep.

[trigger warnings are listed at the bottom of this review and may contain spoilers]

✧·ﾟ: ✧·ﾟ: 4 s t a r s :·ﾟ✧:·ﾟ✧

Wow, I learnt so much reading this. And what a beautiful art style too. Definitely recommend this one if you can handle the subject matter.

trigger warnings: giving birth, needles, suicide attempt, stillbirth, loss of a child, war, gun ...more

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Feb 08, 2020 Reading_ Tamishly rated it really liked it

Finally! This is one book which is hundred percent what it's blurb described as.
I struggled to read this graphic memoir as it's intense and heavy at times. Trigger warnings for violent scenes and abuse and neglect. Vietnamese war times. I don't know what I was thinking when I picked up this one but it turned out to be one of the most memorable graphic novel reads ever. Even though the author claims that the events are true and they happened but most of the part seems like it's subjectively repr ...more

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Mar 07, 2019 My_Strange_Reading rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019-reading-challenge, graphic-novel-manga-comic, historical-fiction, young-adult, non-fiction, bipoc-aapi-author

#mystrangereading The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Autobiographical/historical/memoir of Bui's own story and the story of her family's voyage out of devastation of the Vietnam War.

🎨 The artistry stands on its own as a beautiful, gorgeous, unique story.
🎨 The story was heart wrenching, inspiring and poignant.
🎨 My only issue came from the stream-of-conscience style of story-telling which just threw me all over the place emotionally and "physically" between the stories.

Overall, this is a ...more

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Aug 27, 2018 Libby rated it really liked it

Shelves: family-relationships, family-saga, memoir, non-fiction, published-2017, read-in-2018, graphic-novel

‘The Best We Could Do’ by Thi Bui is my first time to read a graphic novel. It’s a powerful illustrated memoir about a young Vietnamese woman havinng a baby, and recognizing at that moment her own essential link in her family’s story. Bui’s mother flew in from California to be with her daughter while she was in labor, and as Bui expresses so well, “but now that she’s here, she can’t bear to be in the same room.” Accompanying this caption is the picture of her mother standing out in a hallway cry ‘The Best We Could Do’ by Thi Bui is my first time to read a graphic novel. It’s a powerful illustrated memoir about a young Vietnamese woman havinng a baby, and recognizing at that moment her own essential link in her family’s story. Bui’s mother flew in from California to be with her daughter while she was in labor, and as Bui expresses so well, “but now that she’s here, she can’t bear to be in the same room.” Accompanying this caption is the picture of her mother standing out in a hallway crying, her hand over her mouth. As a nursery nurse, I often found family members in hallways overcome with emotion because their loved one was in pain and there was nothing they could do to change that.

In the pages of this book, Bui will look back over the journey that’s brought her to a New York hospital to deliver a son in November of 2005. She explores the histories of both her parents and grandparents in Vietnam. Some of her drawings evoke the sorrows of what her parents endured just to survive. Over the course of the book, I sensed this was a sorrow passed down to their children as readily as the genes they shared.

Bui’s brother Tam’s birth in a refugee camp, their harrowing journey in a boat to escape Vietnam, the contrasting lives of Bui’s parents during their childhoods, and the political conflicts of Vietnam are shared. Thi Bui calls her father Bo and her mother Ma. Bo’s story in pictures are deeply emotive. When Bo is five years old, his father throws his mother out onto the street. Can you imagine the face of a five year old whose mother is no longer available? Bui can and does.

This is not a book that can be discussed adequately with words; it’s a visual experience and has to be seen to be appreciated. The colors throughout are black and white and shades of red. Faces and figures carry volumes of expression. Bui’s journey is an immigrant’s story and the universal story of the search for identity. There is hope here, too, as Bui so wonderfully depicts, in the birth of her son, and a future without the shadows of war. Highly recommended. ...more

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Dec 01, 2017 Mariah Roze rated it really liked it

This was a great autobiography graphic novel. The author talked about her parents leaving war-torn Vietnam and moving to the USA. This also shared the daughter's story of growing up an immigrant and very poor.

This is definitely worth a read! ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Dianne rated it liked it

Well done graphic novel by a woman who came to the US with her family as Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon. Thi Bui reconstructs her parents' paths from their childhoods to where/who they are now, and muses on how their respective pasts have shaped her own life.

Interesting and beautifully illustrated. I especially loved everything having to do with her father. Just.....for some reason, it did not resonate with me or emotionally engage me. Good, but I would have liked to have had a mor ...more

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Jul 29, 2018 Britany rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018, memoir, graphic-novel, bookriot, mmd

This was incredible. The amount of time and work that had to go into its creation alone was fascinating. The tough conversations that took place between a daughter and her parents made me want to cringe and cry.

Thi Bui came to this country under a traumatic veil.Her family is from Vietnam and during the 60's and 70's she shows us how the country went to war with itself and the French influence on their culture. What it was like to grow up in a communist country and then forced to flee to protec ...more

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Nov 10, 2018 Kate rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2018, manga-comics-and-graphic-novels, for-undergrad, for-masters, read-in-2020

4.25/5stars

the art and the story were BEAUTIFUL

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Apr 12, 2018 Anna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 2017-booklist, biography-memoir, own-and-read, nonfiction, read-in-2018, graphic-novels

Reading Women Challenge 2018

5. A graphic novel or memoir

Not sure what I was expecting when I picked this one up to read each night before going to sleep. As someone who reads comics and graphic novels for academic research purposes, I thought that not much can surprise me, hence me naively thinking this will be a light read. Yet The Best We Could Do broke my heart in more ways than it mended it. And I am happy with that!

Bui’s visually stunning book is so much more than an immigrant story: he ...more

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Jul 02, 2022 Bookishrealm rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-read-in-2022, non-fiction, graphic-novels

Check out our live show discussion of this title here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf0E-... ...more

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Feb 19, 2022 Julie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: autobiography-memoir, graphic-novel

Each time I came back to this book I was easily engaged and became fully absorbed. I scribbled notes as I read. In some ways this is a painful book to read, however it is also a compelling and hopeful one. I was truly interested to learn more about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture and also became interested in the author's exploration of her relationship with her parents and how she came to understand them from learning of their life experience. I think that becoming a parent provides a shared exp Each time I came back to this book I was easily engaged and became fully absorbed. I scribbled notes as I read. In some ways this is a painful book to read, however it is also a compelling and hopeful one. I was truly interested to learn more about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture and also became interested in the author's exploration of her relationship with her parents and how she came to understand them from learning of their life experience. I think that becoming a parent provides a shared experience with our parents that can be a catalyst to our reaching out and beginning to understand them as independent individuals.

Something that struck me as I read was that people in their 7os in Vietnam are considered as elderly dependents and tend to live with and are cared for by their families in a more insular existence, whereas here in the U.S. people in their 70s tend to remain active in their communities and live independently, sometimes quite far away from their families. Thi Bui writes about her own parents who emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam, "my parents are stuck in limbo between two sets of expectations .... and I feel guilty."

As Thi Bui explores her parents' past she writes with great sensitivity about how the grief of losing a child affected her whole family. She states specifically from the experience as a sibling, "certain shadows stretched far, casting a gray stillness over our childhood hinting at a darkness we did not understand but could always FEEL."

Thi Bui came to the conclusion that the key to understanding her father is "to learn the right questions to ask." This resonated with me and I think it is true of many relationships. Knowing the right question to ask opens up all kinds of conversations and doors of opportunity to further or deeper understanding. She also writes that she was "afraid of my father, craving safety and comfort. I had no idea that the terror I felt was only the long shadow of his own." This also resonated with me as my own father was an authority figure in my life and could instill fear in me and my siblings. It is enlightening to understand the why of our parents.

At the end of the book it seems that Thi Bui has found a sense of peace and freedom in addition to understanding. She writes that she "will always feel the weight of their [her parents'] past." However, she also writes "I no longer feel the need to reclaim a HOMELAND." ...more

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Sep 16, 2018 Negin rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: those who like memoirs and/or graphic books

Shelves: all-time-favourites, illustrated-graphic, vietnam

I loved this graphic memoir. The illustrations are gorgeous, the story grabbed me right away, and the pain of the author and her family’s past was beautifully depicted. They were refugees who moved to the U.S. after the Vietnam War, but that’s not all that the story is about. There is far more to it than that. It’s a story of a family, rather than just the Vietnam War.

This has to be one of the most emotionally-gripping books that I have read in a while.

My favorite quote:
“Proximity and closene ...more

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May 07, 2018 Monica Kim: musings of monica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018

Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” made me cry thinking of my parents, and the endless sacrifices they made as immigrants raising a family in America, and everything that’s going on in our country today, It has to be one of the toughest decisions my parents had to make, leaving everything behind, and moving to an unknown, foreign country. All immigrants and child of immigrants know those “ugly” teenager phases we went through, we were so frustrated with our parents for not being able to speak Engl Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” made me cry thinking of my parents, and the endless sacrifices they made as immigrants raising a family in America, and everything that’s going on in our country today, It has to be one of the toughest decisions my parents had to make, leaving everything behind, and moving to an unknown, foreign country. All immigrants and child of immigrants know those “ugly” teenager phases we went through, we were so frustrated with our parents for not being able to speak English, always working, and cramped in one small apartments. I grew up poor in rural countryside in a communal-style house, family of five living in one bedroom, shared kitchen with an outdoor “bathroom” in Korea. Both of my parents had a really rough childhood, especially my dad who’s been working since 9. We moved to America not knowing a word of English, but somehow, we made it happen and assimilate to American life. Life was rough when we first moved to America, the constant worry about making ends meet and that sense of frustration and tense lingered for a long time. I am forever grateful for my parents, and I owe my life to them. I never take anything for granted, I learned importance of hustle from them, and to always work hard & be kind to others.
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What Thi Bui has achieved, covered, and captured in this book are pretty remarkable. I’ve never read graphic novel before, so it took a chapter or two to get used to. This was a quick, yet difficult, heartbreaking read. You have to look at the pictures carefully, I think it carries more meaning than the words. In this beautifully Illustrated & emotional graphic memoir, Thi Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves in America, and history of Vietnam, war, and French colonialism. Thi Bui started digging past as a first-time mom to gain a better understanding of her family & parents, and learns about her family’s difficult past and learned to look forward & what it means to be a parent. This must have been a challenge to draw & write, but her conviction & emotions comes through with compassion and clarity. I highly recommend everyone to read this book, it’s a book worth owning! Excellent & profound content and well illustrated & written. ...more

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Sep 23, 2019 Iryna *Book and Sword* rated it liked it

Shelves: from-the-library, immigration-stories, graphic-novels

3.5/5 stars

Oh, to be disappointed by ones own expectations!

Me not loving this book is absolutely not this book's fault. I just imagined something very different when I picked it up. I wanted more of family's relations, struggles to fit in and adjust, culture shock and such. And in a sense all of that was in the book, but on a very large and diffused scale.

The Best We Could Do is more of a family's saga that spans over generations while telling a very detailed war story. More of a history lesson ...more

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Mar 04, 2017 Jenna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: as-am-or-asian-british-writers, vietnam, memoir-and-biography, illustrated

I read this book in one sitting (breathless, emotionally turned inside-out) and you should too.

Bui's family is different from mine in many ways, but I still experienced a sense of recognition on every page, as if her family life had been stitched together from patchwork pieces of mine, or vice versa. It's Thi Bui's truth, but I think it's a lot of other people's truth, too -- I won't use the word "universal," which I mistrust, but it has a sense of scope, of historical breadth. It's an intimate ...more

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Jun 12, 2021 Traci Thomas rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed the book and the history of the Vietnam war from the perspective of multiple generations of a Vietnamese family and the ways that history lingered as they came to the USA. The history was my favorite parts. The book fizzled for me, or maybe it didn’t know how you end. The art is gorgeous and Bui has some wonderful humor sprinkled throughout.

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About Thi Bui

Thi Bui

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Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States as a child. She studied art and law and thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer, but became a public school teacher instead. Bui lives in Berkeley, California, with her son, her husband, and her mother. The Best We Could Do is her debut graphic novel.