The Best We Could Do Themes

Thi Bui explains that she began researching and writing The Best We Could Do in an attempt to better understand and connect with her Má and Bố (mom and dad)—that is, to “learn to love [her parents] better.” While a wide gulf divides her parents’ experiences from her own, her family sticks together anyway. Her book attempts to understand this contradiction and explain what motivates family to care for one another by investigating her own…

When Thi Bui first realizes that her parents are reluctant to talk about their past in Việt Nam, she already knows that her family’s “gray stillness” has something to do with “a darkness [her parents] did not understand but could always FEEL.” But as Má and Bố begin to recount their childhoods, Bui quickly sees that she is asking them to unwrap their “wounds beneath wounds.” Not only has trauma marked her parents forever, but…

A historian might say that Thi Bui’s parents and grandparents live through at least five different governments and four different wars. But for Má, Bố, and their ancestors, it would be more accurate to say that conflict and authoritarian (usually foreign) rule are a consistent fact of life in Việt Nam. It does not much matter to them whether their oppressors are French, Japanese, Chinese, American, or North or South Vietnamese…

Beyond its importance as a narrative of immigration and daily life in 20th-century Vietnam, The Best We Could Do is also celebrated as a pioneering work in a genre of illustrated nonfiction increasingly referred to as “graphic memoir.” Noticeably, Thi Bui did not draw comics before beginning The Best We Could Do, but rather learned the art form for this project. As she explains in her brief preface to the book, she chose the…