The Best We Could Do

Starred review from December 5, 2016
Tracing her family’s journey to the United States and their sometimes-uneasy adaptation to American life, Bui’s magnificent memoir is not unique in its overall shape, but its details are: a bit of blood sausage in a time of famine, a chilly apartment, a father’s sandals contrasted with his son’s professional shoes. The story opens with the birth of Bui’s son in New York City, and then goes back to Vietnam to trace the many births and stillbirths of her parents, and their eventual boat journey to the U.S. In excavating her family’s trauma through these brief, luminous glimpses, Bui transmutes the base metal of war and struggle into gold. She does not spare her loved ones criticism or linger needlessly on their flaws. Likewise she refuses to flatten the twists and turns of their histories into neat, linear narratives. She embraces the whole of it: the misery of the Vietnam War, the alien land of America, and the liminal space she occupies, as the child with so much on her shoulders. In this mélange of comedy and tragedy, family love and brokenness, she finds beauty.

Starred review from March 15, 2017
Artist and public-school teacher Bui's memoir and graphic-novel debut is a stunning work of reconstructed family and world history. In 1976, faced with job loss, little food, and constant surveillance, Bui's family fled Vietnam for the U.S. Her parents were born during the First Indochina War, from 194654, and in learning and recording their experiencesher father's were especially full of unfathomable sorrowsand the complex political situations that led her family to become refugees, Bui makes sense of what she couldn't as a child. Her stony father's humble heroism emerges, and though she claims her mother's story is the harder one to tell, since their lives are so entwined, she does this, too, with fullness and empathy. In an unforgettable scene, young Bui, despite growing up in San Diego, discovers she's inherited a refugee reflex to gather her minimal important belongings and seek safety at the slightest hint of danger. Inked in black and shaded with red ochre washes, Bui's expressive drawings are striking in their clarity, expression, and depth; the faces of her loved ones quickly become familiar. In creatively telling a complicated story with the kind of feeling words alone rarely relay, The Best We Could Do does the very best that comics can do. This is a necessary, ever-timely story to share far and wide.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 1, 2017

Bui meticulously researched her family's history, discovering how their past affects her. Her family's story is full of struggle and heartache, and the author/illustrator beautifully details her parents' escape from Vietnam to the United States in search of a better life. A new mother, Bui returns to the theme of parenthood and family, and teens will recognize her yearning for stability and a happy future as well as her self-doubt and fear of repeating her parents' mistakes. A compelling narrative and breathtakingly elegant artwork with subtle colors and expressive and finely drawn characters make this title a standout. Curricular tie-ins include immigration policies, refugees, colonization, and the Vietnam War. VERDICT Hand this essential volume to teens who appreciate David Small's Stitches and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.