The Best We Could Do Preface Summary & Analysis

The author, Thi Bui, explains that The Best We Could Do began with an oral history project in graduate school. She realized that mere transcripts did not “present history in a way that is human and relatable and not oversimplified,” so she learned to draw comics and began the book in 2005. Burdened with numerous commitments—raising her son, moving across the United States, and teaching—Bui often had trouble finding time to work on this research-intensive and emotionally intense book, which is why it took her more than a decade to complete the process. She also acknowledges and thanks the “artists, writers, and editors” who made the book possible, along with her family.

More than a decade of careful thought, work, and trial and error went into The Best We Could Do. One of Bui’s primary motives for undertaking this project was actually the potential she saw in the graphic novel medium, which is uniquely poised to tell personal stories with an emotional subtlety that first-person narrative cannot capture and a narrative continuity and specificity that visual art alone cannot offer. Because graphic novels are a hybrid form that combines two different kinds of information, they are also a useful way to integrate personal experience with political and historical fact. In fact, with her skepticism about singular and totalizing narratives, Bui also clearly wants to challenge the strict division of life into separate “personal” and “political” spheres.

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Thi Bui narrates a 2017 conversation between her and the celebrated Vietnamese American novelist Việt Thanh Nguyễn. They meet in a bookstore, where Bui asks Nguyễn how he keeps his hair so perfectly coiffed. Nguyễn jokingly explains his four-step routine, but then recalls that hair was an important sign of “masculinity and style” for Vietnamese refugees in California in the 1980s. He shows Bui pictures of himself from that era, and she comments that his hair gave him a kind of “power” as a marginalized immigrant. Bui dedicated herself to school for the same reason. Nguyễn notes that he was not nearly “as motivated as [Bui].” He only got into one college, and was so “deeply disappointed in [him]self” that he started to work hard—which he has kept doing ever since.

Although this preface has no direct connection to the rest of the story, Bui’s conversation with Nguyễn still allows the reader to digest her artistic style and sense of humor, and also addresses Vietnamese immigrants’ struggle to integrate into and assert their identity within the United States after the end of the Vietnam War. Nguyễn’s hair and Bui’s dedication to school were both strategies for self-empowerment and the pursuit of freedom in a society that did not necessarily recognize them as legitimate or “proper” citizens. Finally, through this episode Bui inserts herself into the contemporary conversation around Vietnamese literature and representation in the United States—Việt Thanh Nguyễn is the only Vietnamese American writer that many Americans have ever heard of, and Bui idolizes him (and his hair) because he is one of few Vietnamese American writers in the mainstream. At the same time, the familiarity of their encounter makes it clear that Nguyễn is just another normal person, whose fame does not convert him into a mouthpiece for all Vietnamese Americans. He and Bui are friends, not competitors; they clearly agree that there is space for more nuance and complexity in narratives about Việt Nam.

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Bui then provides a detailed, illustrated timeline of Vietnamese history. She notes occupations by the Chinese (111 BC-938 AD), French (1887-1954), and Japanese (1940-1945), but focuses on the period relevant to her book: 1945-1975. In the decade after World War II, the First Indochina War led to Việt Nam’s partition into two countries. The Communist North was run by the Việt Minh, the anti-French and anti-Japanese independence movement led byHồ Chí Minh, and the capitalist South was run by the Western-backed, antidemocratic leader Ngô Đình Diệm.

Although Việt Nam’s history is complicated and can be excessively confusing for readers with no previous knowledge of the region, Bui also re-narrates much of this history where relevant throughout her book. However, her timeline can always serve as a reference for confused readers. Notably, Việt Nam has been ruled by various different foreign empires for roughly half of its recorded history—conflict, change, and cultural mixture were not unusual there, and were certainly not introduced by Europeans. For the purposes of Bui’s book, the most important detail is the partition of Việt Nam between the Communist North and the Western-backed South. The Cold War meant that Việt Nam’s internal affairs had wide-reaching consequences.

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In the late 1950s, the Việt Cộng began military activities in the South. Starting in 1955, the United States gradually escalated its own military involvement, first providing support to the South Vietnamese government and then launching a full-scale invasion in 1965. In the next five years, the anti-war movement won over much of the American public, and the US began slowly withdrawing troops from 1969 onwards. But it continued supporting the South and secretly bombing Cambodia until 1973, when American troops fully withdrew. On Liberation Day, April 30, 1975, North Việt Nam officially captured Sài Gòn, and the South Vietnamese government surrendered.

This portion of the timeline covers the Second Indochina War, which is usually called the “Vietnam War” in the United States (and in Bui’s book) but the “American War” in Việt Nam. Bui seems to be going into the book with the goal that readers from the United States (and countries allied with it) will be better able to reflect on the way they have learned about this war in the past. Through her book, readers may be able to gain a new perspective on the war and the suffering it caused—which continued for long after the American withdrawal.

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The Best We Could Do: Preface Summary & Analysis