The Best We Could Do

by

Thi Bui

Thi Bui Character Analysis

The author, illustrator, and central protagonist of The Best We Could Do is a Vietnamese American writer and artist who sets out to uncover her family’s roots and trace their history in Việt Nam. She hopes that undertaking this project will help her “learn to love [her parents] better,” prepare her to communicate her family’s history to her own son, make sense of differences between Vietnamese and American cultural expectations, and understand the history and tragedy of the country where she was born. Born in Sài Gòn only “three months before South Việt Nam lost the war” to the North, Thi Bui flees Việt Nam with her family and moves to the United States at the age of three. She grows up in California with her dedicated, hardworking mother, her disconnected, traumatized father, her two older sisters Lan and Bích, and her younger brother and closest peer, Tâm. After college in 1999, Bui “mov[es] to New York to be an artist and live with [her] artist boyfriend.” Over the next seven years, she becomes a teacher, marries Travis, has a son, and decides to move back to California to be with her parents. Although Bui had started investigating her family’s past through oral histories, it is upon returning to California that she truly gets started on The Best We Could Do, learning to draw comics and hold more in-depth interviews with her parents. When she finishes and publishes the book more than a decade later, she has finally come to terms with her Má and Bố’s difficult lives in Việt Nam and worked through the trauma she inherited. Bui realizes that she can accept and supersede this inheritance, letting the past shape rather than define her. At the end of the book, she applies the lessons she has learned as a daughter to the task of parenting her own son, whom she hopes will have the chance to “be free.”

Thi Bui Quotes in The Best We Could Do

The The Best We Could Do quotes below are all either spoken by Thi Bui or refer to Thi Bui. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Family, Inheritance, and Parenthood Theme Icon
).
Preface Quotes

I titled my project “Buis in Vietnam and America: A Memory Reconstruction.” It had photographs and some art, but mostly writing, and it was pretty academic. However, I didn’t feel like I had solved the storytelling problem of how to present history in a way that is human and relatable and not oversimplified. I thought that turning it into a graphic novel might help. So then I had to learn how to do comics! I drew the initial draft of the first pages in 2005, and it’s been a steep learning curve working in this medium.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: Preface
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1 Quotes

But if I surrender, I’m afraid I’ll want a full retreat—
to go all the way back. To be the baby and not the mother.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Thi and Travis’s Son , The Doctor
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

FAMILY is now something I have created—
—and not just something I was born into.
The responsibility is immense.
A wave of empathy for my mother washes over me.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Thi and Travis’s Son
Page Number: 21-22
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

My parents escaped Việt Nam on a boat so their children could grow up in freedom.
You’d think I could be more grateful.
I am now older than my parents were when they made that incredible journey.
But I fear that around them, I will always be a child…
and they a symbol to me—two sides of a chasm, full of meaning and resentment.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

My parents are retired, in good health, and free to do as they please…
…but also lonely, aging, and quietly wishing we’d take better care of them.
In Việt Nam, they would be considered very old in their seventies.
In America, where people their age run marathons or at least independently, my parents are stuck in limbo between two sets of expectations…
…and I feel guilty.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:

Soon after that trip back to Việt Nam (our first since we escaped in 1978)…
…I began to record our family history…
thinking that if I bridged the gap between the past and the present…
…I could fill the void between my parents and me.
And that if I could see Việt Nam as a real place, and not a symbol of something lost…
…I would see my parents as real people…
and learn to love them better.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Though my world was small,
I would sometimes dream of being free in it.
This was my favorite dream.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, Thi and Travis’s Son
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 89-90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

To understand how my father became the way he was,
I had to learn what happened to him as a little boy.
It took a long time
to learn the right questions to ask.
When I did, the stories poured forth with no beginning or end—
anecdotes without shape,
wounds beneath wounds.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 92-93
Explanation and Analysis:

I had never, before researching the background of my father’s stories, imagined that these horrible events were connected to my family history…

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

I grew up with the terrified boy who became my father.
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.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 128-129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Every casualty in war is someone’s grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother, sister, child, lover.
In the decade of the First Indochina War, while my parents were still children learning their place in the world…
…an estimated 94,000 French soldiers died trying to reclaim France’s colony.
Three to four times as many Vietnamese died fighting them or running away from them.
This was the human cost of ending France’s colonial rule in Southeast Asia…
…and winning Việt Nam’s independence.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, Bố’s Grandfather, Bố’s Grandmother
Page Number: 157
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

I imagine that the awe and excitement I felt for New York when I moved there after college—
—must be something like what my father felt when he arrived in Sài Gòn in 1955.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:

I still have the chessboard my father made when I was a kid, and the wooden set of pieces we played with.
the CHARIOT
the ELEPHANT
the GENERAL
the COUNSELOR
the SOLDIERS
Revisiting this game of war and strategy, I think about how none of the Vietnamese people in that video have a name or a voice.
My grandparents, my parents, my sisters, and me—
—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

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, Tâm
Page Number: 185-186
Explanation and Analysis:

I understand why it was easier for her to not tell me these things directly, and I DID want to know.
But it still wasn’t EASY for me to swallow that my mother had been at her happiest without us.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Travis
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, The General
Related Symbols: The “Saigon Execution” Photo
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The American version of this story is one of South Vietnamese cowardice, corruption, and ineptitude…
…South Vietnamese soldiers abandoning their uniforms in the street…
…Americans crying at their wasted efforts to save a country not worth saving.
But Communist forces entered Sài Gòn without a fight, and no blood was shed.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: 216
Explanation and Analysis:

My father explained to me that there was a word for our kind—
NGỤY
It meant “false, lying, deceitful”—but it could be applied to anyone in the South.
It meant constant monitoring, distrust, and the ever-present feeling that our family could, at any moment, be separated, our safety jeopardized.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

We were now BOAT PEOPLE—
—five among hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding into neighboring countries, seeking asylum.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố, Lan, Bích
Related Symbols: The Ocean, The “Saigon Execution” Photo
Page Number: 267
Explanation and Analysis:

The refugee camp was also a place where many people reinvented themselves.
Some people met each other in camp…
…and listed themselves on paper as married couples.
Some even adopted children traveling alone. So they could be resettled together.
Some changed their names or their age.
“If I’m ten years younger, I’ll find a job easier!”
“If I’m ten years older, I’ll retire earlier!”

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:

Our cousins were older and had been in America for three years already.
We probably embarrassed them with our fresh-off-the-boat appearance.
“Don’t be such a REFUGEE! Eat it [the cereal] in a bowl with some MILK!”
“I don’t LIKE milk! And who DOESN’T eat cereal out of the box?”
“Well, at least don’t eat like that in front of my house where everyone can see you!”

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bích (speaker), Ðào
Page Number: 285
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

This—not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture—is my inheritance:
the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to RUN when the shit hits the fan.
My Refugee Reflex.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

That first week of parenting was the hardest week of my life, and the only time I ever felt called upon to be HEROIC.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố, Travis, Thi and Travis’s Son
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 312
Explanation and Analysis:

I’m no longer a kid…am I?
Having a child taught me, certainly,
that I am not the center of the universe.
But being a child, even a grown-up one, seems to me to be a lifetime pass for selfishness.
We hang resentment onto the things our parents did to us, or the things they DIDN’T do for us…
…and in my case—
—call them by the wrong name.
To accidentally call myself Mẹ
was to slip myself into her shoes
just for a moment.
To let her be not what I want her to be
but someone independent, self-determining, and free,
means letting go of that picture of her in my head.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Thi and Travis’s Son
Page Number: 317-319
Explanation and Analysis:

What has worried me since having my own child
was whether I would pass along some gene for sorrow
or unintentionally inflict damage I could never undo.
But when I look at my son, now ten years old,
I don’t see war and loss
or even Travis and me.
I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence,
and I think maybe he can be free.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Thi and Travis’s Son
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 327-329
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Best We Could Do LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Best We Could Do PDF

Thi Bui Quotes in The Best We Could Do

The The Best We Could Do quotes below are all either spoken by Thi Bui or refer to Thi Bui. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Family, Inheritance, and Parenthood Theme Icon
).
Preface Quotes

I titled my project “Buis in Vietnam and America: A Memory Reconstruction.” It had photographs and some art, but mostly writing, and it was pretty academic. However, I didn’t feel like I had solved the storytelling problem of how to present history in a way that is human and relatable and not oversimplified. I thought that turning it into a graphic novel might help. So then I had to learn how to do comics! I drew the initial draft of the first pages in 2005, and it’s been a steep learning curve working in this medium.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: Preface
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1 Quotes

But if I surrender, I’m afraid I’ll want a full retreat—
to go all the way back. To be the baby and not the mother.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Thi and Travis’s Son , The Doctor
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

FAMILY is now something I have created—
—and not just something I was born into.
The responsibility is immense.
A wave of empathy for my mother washes over me.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Thi and Travis’s Son
Page Number: 21-22
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

My parents escaped Việt Nam on a boat so their children could grow up in freedom.
You’d think I could be more grateful.
I am now older than my parents were when they made that incredible journey.
But I fear that around them, I will always be a child…
and they a symbol to me—two sides of a chasm, full of meaning and resentment.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

My parents are retired, in good health, and free to do as they please…
…but also lonely, aging, and quietly wishing we’d take better care of them.
In Việt Nam, they would be considered very old in their seventies.
In America, where people their age run marathons or at least independently, my parents are stuck in limbo between two sets of expectations…
…and I feel guilty.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:

Soon after that trip back to Việt Nam (our first since we escaped in 1978)…
…I began to record our family history…
thinking that if I bridged the gap between the past and the present…
…I could fill the void between my parents and me.
And that if I could see Việt Nam as a real place, and not a symbol of something lost…
…I would see my parents as real people…
and learn to love them better.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Though my world was small,
I would sometimes dream of being free in it.
This was my favorite dream.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, Thi and Travis’s Son
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 89-90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

To understand how my father became the way he was,
I had to learn what happened to him as a little boy.
It took a long time
to learn the right questions to ask.
When I did, the stories poured forth with no beginning or end—
anecdotes without shape,
wounds beneath wounds.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 92-93
Explanation and Analysis:

I had never, before researching the background of my father’s stories, imagined that these horrible events were connected to my family history…

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

I grew up with the terrified boy who became my father.
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.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 128-129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Every casualty in war is someone’s grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother, sister, child, lover.
In the decade of the First Indochina War, while my parents were still children learning their place in the world…
…an estimated 94,000 French soldiers died trying to reclaim France’s colony.
Three to four times as many Vietnamese died fighting them or running away from them.
This was the human cost of ending France’s colonial rule in Southeast Asia…
…and winning Việt Nam’s independence.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, Bố’s Grandfather, Bố’s Grandmother
Page Number: 157
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

I imagine that the awe and excitement I felt for New York when I moved there after college—
—must be something like what my father felt when he arrived in Sài Gòn in 1955.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:

I still have the chessboard my father made when I was a kid, and the wooden set of pieces we played with.
the CHARIOT
the ELEPHANT
the GENERAL
the COUNSELOR
the SOLDIERS
Revisiting this game of war and strategy, I think about how none of the Vietnamese people in that video have a name or a voice.
My grandparents, my parents, my sisters, and me—
—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

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, Tâm
Page Number: 185-186
Explanation and Analysis:

I understand why it was easier for her to not tell me these things directly, and I DID want to know.
But it still wasn’t EASY for me to swallow that my mother had been at her happiest without us.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Travis
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố, The General
Related Symbols: The “Saigon Execution” Photo
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The American version of this story is one of South Vietnamese cowardice, corruption, and ineptitude…
…South Vietnamese soldiers abandoning their uniforms in the street…
…Americans crying at their wasted efforts to save a country not worth saving.
But Communist forces entered Sài Gòn without a fight, and no blood was shed.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: 216
Explanation and Analysis:

My father explained to me that there was a word for our kind—
NGỤY
It meant “false, lying, deceitful”—but it could be applied to anyone in the South.
It meant constant monitoring, distrust, and the ever-present feeling that our family could, at any moment, be separated, our safety jeopardized.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bố
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

We were now BOAT PEOPLE—
—five among hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding into neighboring countries, seeking asylum.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố, Lan, Bích
Related Symbols: The Ocean, The “Saigon Execution” Photo
Page Number: 267
Explanation and Analysis:

The refugee camp was also a place where many people reinvented themselves.
Some people met each other in camp…
…and listed themselves on paper as married couples.
Some even adopted children traveling alone. So they could be resettled together.
Some changed their names or their age.
“If I’m ten years younger, I’ll find a job easier!”
“If I’m ten years older, I’ll retire earlier!”

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:

Our cousins were older and had been in America for three years already.
We probably embarrassed them with our fresh-off-the-boat appearance.
“Don’t be such a REFUGEE! Eat it [the cereal] in a bowl with some MILK!”
“I don’t LIKE milk! And who DOESN’T eat cereal out of the box?”
“Well, at least don’t eat like that in front of my house where everyone can see you!”

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Bích (speaker), Ðào
Page Number: 285
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

This—not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture—is my inheritance:
the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to RUN when the shit hits the fan.
My Refugee Reflex.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker)
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

That first week of parenting was the hardest week of my life, and the only time I ever felt called upon to be HEROIC.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Bố, Travis, Thi and Travis’s Son
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 312
Explanation and Analysis:

I’m no longer a kid…am I?
Having a child taught me, certainly,
that I am not the center of the universe.
But being a child, even a grown-up one, seems to me to be a lifetime pass for selfishness.
We hang resentment onto the things our parents did to us, or the things they DIDN’T do for us…
…and in my case—
—call them by the wrong name.
To accidentally call myself Mẹ
was to slip myself into her shoes
just for a moment.
To let her be not what I want her to be
but someone independent, self-determining, and free,
means letting go of that picture of her in my head.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), , Thi and Travis’s Son
Page Number: 317-319
Explanation and Analysis:

What has worried me since having my own child
was whether I would pass along some gene for sorrow
or unintentionally inflict damage I could never undo.
But when I look at my son, now ten years old,
I don’t see war and loss
or even Travis and me.
I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence,
and I think maybe he can be free.

Related Characters: Thi Bui (speaker), Thi and Travis’s Son
Related Symbols: The Ocean
Page Number: 327-329
Explanation and Analysis: