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A review by espiri_reads
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
5.0
This is again, one of those stories that makes you fall in love with the characters. This time, however, the characters are not fictional, they are Thi Bui and her family, which makes you feel even more connected to the people whose lives you see illustrated in this graphic novel. Multiple tears were shed while reading this story. I ended the book feeling like I just wanted to hold the Bui family close.
This memoir is the story of Thi Bui's family and their escape from Vietnam in the 1970s. It also covers their eventual transition as refugees and immigrants to the US. She traces her story back to her great grandparents in order for the reader to understand the history of Vietnam, which I learned A LOT about through this story. It's also important that she traces it back several generations because in exploring her parent's histories, she understands the weight they carried with them and how that impacted the choices they made as parents.
I learned so much while reading this book. It is not often that the Vietnam story you get in the US is from the point of view of Vietnamese refugees. The mainstream US point of view is of antiwar protesters or the veterans that fought in the war. So I appreciate what this book does for the larger story of the Vietnam War.
And as different as this story is from my family history, I still found myself relating to it a lot as a daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. It is such a remarkable story, and at the same time it is also a representative story of many people who chose to flee Vietnam around the same time. This made me think about my family's history and inspired me to start working on writing down more of my parents' story.
Another deep connection I made with this book is as a mother. I keep trying to find the right words to explain how symbolic it is that Bui starts her family story at her child's birth. It's symbolic in that the birth seems to also give birth to her desire to understand her parents, their choices, and how they related to their children. Bui illustrates both the ancestral strength and the intergenerational trauma that she inherits because she wonders what both mean for her child. I connected to this BIG TIME. And the way she illustrated the physical, emotional, and existential struggle of transitioning into motherhood was so REAL. Like if any expecting first-time mom ever asks about what it's really like, I'm just going to point to the first and last few pages of this graphic novel.
I love the small, but powerful moments she chooses to illustrate that show the connection between Bui and her mother and siblings. Like the drawings of how she and her siblings would cuddle with their mom while watching TV. And I feel like she was very fair in the way she portrayed her parents.
This book gives you permission to have some really nice cries, but you won't feel bad at the end of them. You will feel more grounded and self-aware.
This memoir is the story of Thi Bui's family and their escape from Vietnam in the 1970s. It also covers their eventual transition as refugees and immigrants to the US. She traces her story back to her great grandparents in order for the reader to understand the history of Vietnam, which I learned A LOT about through this story. It's also important that she traces it back several generations because in exploring her parent's histories, she understands the weight they carried with them and how that impacted the choices they made as parents.
I learned so much while reading this book. It is not often that the Vietnam story you get in the US is from the point of view of Vietnamese refugees. The mainstream US point of view is of antiwar protesters or the veterans that fought in the war. So I appreciate what this book does for the larger story of the Vietnam War.
And as different as this story is from my family history, I still found myself relating to it a lot as a daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. It is such a remarkable story, and at the same time it is also a representative story of many people who chose to flee Vietnam around the same time. This made me think about my family's history and inspired me to start working on writing down more of my parents' story.
Another deep connection I made with this book is as a mother. I keep trying to find the right words to explain how symbolic it is that Bui starts her family story at her child's birth. It's symbolic in that the birth seems to also give birth to her desire to understand her parents, their choices, and how they related to their children. Bui illustrates both the ancestral strength and the intergenerational trauma that she inherits because she wonders what both mean for her child. I connected to this BIG TIME. And the way she illustrated the physical, emotional, and existential struggle of transitioning into motherhood was so REAL. Like if any expecting first-time mom ever asks about what it's really like, I'm just going to point to the first and last few pages of this graphic novel.
I love the small, but powerful moments she chooses to illustrate that show the connection between Bui and her mother and siblings. Like the drawings of how she and her siblings would cuddle with their mom while watching TV. And I feel like she was very fair in the way she portrayed her parents.
This book gives you permission to have some really nice cries, but you won't feel bad at the end of them. You will feel more grounded and self-aware.