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4.4 AVERAGE
4.4 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
A towering story, beautifully suited to the graphic novel form, about a family's heartbreaking past in one country and their hopeful, uncertain, wounded future in another. The graphics tell a story beyond words, though the words are also beautiful, inspiring, and poignant by turns. To anyone who wishes to understand more of the immigrant and refugee experience, you could not do better than to spend time with this book.
medium-paced
Novels like Maus and The Best We Could Do remind us of the cost of history. Cataclysmic events occur that change the fates of entire nations but seldom do people talk about the actual cost of those changes. Sure there's change on a massive level, as said above, but what about the shadows that those changes cast over everything that happens in the world years and years after. To be more specific, how do these things affect the people brought into being generations after all of it even happened?
Both these books did a lot to remind a reader of that and examine it as well. How does a parent who has survived a Nazi concentration camp or the Vietnam war even try to raise a child normally? And how does the child feel when they learn of the immense sacrifices that their parents made so that they could have an actual life? Parenthood is all about sacrifice, yes, but on this scale, it can become a burden, which unlike the others, cannot be let go of or gotten rid of.
This burden is the theme of Thi Bui's moving memoir of her childhood and her parents' lives, all while she lays in a hospital bed, having given birth to a child herself. It's not meant to be subtle or nuanced and that's actually really good. Not every story needs to be kept low or under the radar and the almost openly defiant honesty of this book is refreshing. Told very simply, Bui talks of her upbringing and how it was affected by her parents' lives as they grew up. Followed by an account of how they fled from Vietnam to America and ending back where the story began, The Best We Could Do is ultimately a triumph. It's clear that Bui gained some understanding of her own about her existence as she wrote this and her truth is laid bare within these pages. My only qualm is that sometimes it feels like she's holding back, unsure of whether she should talk more on something or show more on it. While that's not a bad thing and might have hurt the book, it might have elevated it even more.
Despite that Bui's work is still stellar. Her pencils, too, are amazingly emotive. Her style of drawing and rendering scenes is more about feeling than actual physical detail. This is accentuated by the use of the burnt orangish colour as a theme, making the pages seem like pages from a worn out, old and tattered book, adding more to the whole memoir aspect. There are scenes, of course, where this approach doesn't work, given it's slightly limited usage but Bui manages to make up for it in others, complementing her emotions-laden art with some scenes of such serenity that I had to stop myself from staring endlessly.
Thi Bui's graphic novel is just amazing. It uses a very real and relatable human emotion to begin its tale and never lets up on emphasizing the human aspect. It's a seminal work, especially considering the historical events it captures, and can honestly be considered among the greats, such as Bechdel and Spiegelman. This book deserves to be read by everyone, despite some minor flaws, and I hope to have it on my shelf soon...since I rented it from a library.
Both these books did a lot to remind a reader of that and examine it as well. How does a parent who has survived a Nazi concentration camp or the Vietnam war even try to raise a child normally? And how does the child feel when they learn of the immense sacrifices that their parents made so that they could have an actual life? Parenthood is all about sacrifice, yes, but on this scale, it can become a burden, which unlike the others, cannot be let go of or gotten rid of.
This burden is the theme of Thi Bui's moving memoir of her childhood and her parents' lives, all while she lays in a hospital bed, having given birth to a child herself. It's not meant to be subtle or nuanced and that's actually really good. Not every story needs to be kept low or under the radar and the almost openly defiant honesty of this book is refreshing. Told very simply, Bui talks of her upbringing and how it was affected by her parents' lives as they grew up. Followed by an account of how they fled from Vietnam to America and ending back where the story began, The Best We Could Do is ultimately a triumph. It's clear that Bui gained some understanding of her own about her existence as she wrote this and her truth is laid bare within these pages. My only qualm is that sometimes it feels like she's holding back, unsure of whether she should talk more on something or show more on it. While that's not a bad thing and might have hurt the book, it might have elevated it even more.
Despite that Bui's work is still stellar. Her pencils, too, are amazingly emotive. Her style of drawing and rendering scenes is more about feeling than actual physical detail. This is accentuated by the use of the burnt orangish colour as a theme, making the pages seem like pages from a worn out, old and tattered book, adding more to the whole memoir aspect. There are scenes, of course, where this approach doesn't work, given it's slightly limited usage but Bui manages to make up for it in others, complementing her emotions-laden art with some scenes of such serenity that I had to stop myself from staring endlessly.
Thi Bui's graphic novel is just amazing. It uses a very real and relatable human emotion to begin its tale and never lets up on emphasizing the human aspect. It's a seminal work, especially considering the historical events it captures, and can honestly be considered among the greats, such as Bechdel and Spiegelman. This book deserves to be read by everyone, despite some minor flaws, and I hope to have it on my shelf soon...since I rented it from a library.
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
Graphic memoir about one family's journey from Vietnam during the war. It's beautiful and well-crafted, and introduced to a whole human experience I know very little about especially about this era.
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced