The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

I loved this book. I devoured the entire thing in one sitting on a Sunday afternoon. It's a beautiful and tragic and warm story all at the same time. I feel like a lot of times when we hear about the Vietnam war in the United States, it's told from the perspective of American soldiers rather than the Southern Vietnamese who lost their home land. Really refreshing to see this diverse and nuanced perspective. I look forward to Thi Bui's future works.

As soon as I finished the first scene of The Best We Could Do my lips started to tremble. I knew I was in for it. This book is uniquely evocative of a time, a place and experience that many of us refugees assume is normal. It’s not normal, even if it’s a familiar refugee experience. I’m a new mom, born the same year as the author in Saigon, and we escaped on a boat one year after her family did. This book hit really close to home. Reading about the Vietnamese experience in the form of a comic book strips the experience down to its bare roots. And those roots are complex, rough, and beautiful. The Best We Could Do is an absolute treasure. I know what I’ll be giving to my closest friends this year for Christmas. Those who read it will understand the Vietnamese experience more deeply. Thanks to Bill Gates for recommending this book among his top 5 for 2017 reads!

I first learned about this book only a week ago when visiting my sister for Thanksgiving in Eugene, Oregon. We went to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art where I saw some work on display by the author, and there was a copy of her book available to look at, so I perused through and decided to buy it and read it. I'm so glad that I did! This is an incredible, poetic story that spans four generations, multiple wars and conflicts, and examines the fragility of the author's relationship with her parents and with her sense of place and motherhood. This book is one of the best I've read in a long time, and the art is moving and beautiful. It gave me new insight into the struggles of refugee life, and created a truly relatable narrative. I devoured this story in one Saturday. I highly recommend it.

I got this for my Ethnic Studies class and was eager to read a graphic novel and call it homework. While not as thoroughly covered as other material I studied in class this was still fascinating to sit down and read. Thi Bui writes a memoir of her life from when she gave birth to her son. With memories of her labor as the first thing she then begins to question her mortality, via the life and times of those closest to her, specifically her family. Thi Bui had lived her life in a good home but via a strange series of incidents that make it less than ideal. In time she realizes that it’s her parents’ trauma via having endured what can truly be called even worse than less than ideal, outright abusive. But I guess that’s what happens when you live two decades of war. World War II, the Indochina War, and the Vietnam War. Nam Bui and Hang Troung endured life via war in a country that had endured ages of colonial rule, and fierce nationalistic movements, all the while trying to live their lives. But despite all the abuse they endured, whether from bad parents, a country at war, miscarriages, and doing their best to make it alive after the final war’s end as refugees to America. Truly living up to the adage of doing “The Best We Could,” so that their children would live a better life. My class studied the Vietnamese/Indochina experience in our Ethnic Studies class, I’ve also read and watched a lot about the Vietnam War, and I have a great respect for the people who endured a cause that most Americans refuse to acknowledge. I especially found the art, while not as realistic at times, was still complex, giving a realistic vibe while presenting it in a simplified form. There was a lot of depth and range that came from the art, and it tells the story very well. Many compliments to the author for sharing such a great story of her life and her family.

I loved the raw depictions of vietnamese history and human emotions. I recommend this book to anyone experiencing intergenerational trauma. 5 stars, this book helped me understand my father and mother just a little more, and that is priceless

Stories like this and Grave Of The Fireflies show is the dark side of war, although this story is not so sad. You can see the everyday struggles of war and its effect on day to day life throughout the story. It is also a personal story. So there are bittersweet moments too and it has that slice-of-life angle which makes it very relatable/understandable to read. The artwork is also very distinct and unique and I love it for that. This graphic novel also gave me insights into Vietnam war and left me curious for more details. I’ll definitely recommend this a “must read”.

Full review on nguyentoread.com The Best We Could Do is Thi Bui's graphic memoir. Thi was born in Vietnam three months before the Vietnam War reached what we consider to be the end of the war. She came to America with her family in 1978. Bui's memoir spans multiple generations. In learning of her mother's and father's pasts, we learn the history of their parents. We see the struggles and pains of two people from very different walks of life trying to live during a time of war and chaos. We see glimpses of the agony everyone in the middle of the Vietnam War faced. Those who were not directly involved on either side but were caught in the middle of larger powers at war. This memoir more closely details the lives of her parents leading up to them arriving in America and making their life there. I was unsure if this memoir would focus largely on the experience of being a Vietnamese immigrant in America. There were parts that showed how it was for Bui's parents in a country where tensions were still high after the Vietnam War, where discrimination largely due to that was overt, and where degrees were not recognized and people who had spent their lives working and creating careers for themselves were not qualified for most work and had to hurdle multiple challenges to learn a language and complete education all over again if they wanted to provide a better life for their children. What Bui so beautifully captures in this memoir is the why behind how her parents were in raising her. Although Bui was born in Vietnam she was young when her family arrived in America. So I think her experience is one that many first generation Vietnamese-American people of my generation can understand and sympathize with. The wanting to know why their parents are the way they are but unable to ask because many have parents, like Bui's mother, who reluctantly share their stories and don't allow their children that glimpse that could help them better understand. In the panel which was most poignant to me, Bui draws her father as he looks over her work that would become The Best We Could Do. He says "You know how it was for me. And why later I wouldn't be... normal."

This is by far the best book I have read this year. It is written with so much love and understanding by the author for her parents as she learns of their individual backgrounds of what took place throughout their lives, the impact of how the turmoil of the country and their journey coming to America had on them. Through this, she comes to terms with who they are as her parents and she their daughter while embracing motherhood herself. I had some difficulty with this type of book but it may be me, however it didn't detract from the story enough to affect the rating.