Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir - Hardcover

Bui, Thi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1419718770 ISBN 13: 9781419718779

Publisher: Abrams ComicArts, 2017

Synopsis

"a mesmerising tale, given extra power by the art on every page." Matt Haig, The Guardian

The Best We Could Do explores the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child. Thi Bui documents her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves in America. At the heart of Bui's story is a universal struggle: adjusting to life as a first-time mother. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, The Best We Could Do examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home, providing inspiration to all who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.

About this title

Review:

'Thi Bui's debut interweaves an account of her own life in the US with her parents' coming-of-age in, and eventual escape from, Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. [...] Yet this is not a book without hope. The Best We Can Do shows that empathy trumps hate, fear and cruelty.' Times Higher Education Supplement
'Thi Bui's stark, compelling memoir is about an ordinary family, but her story delivers the painful truth that most Vietnamese of the 20th century know in an utterly personal fashion that history is found in the marrow of one s bones, ready to be passed on through blood, through generations, through feelings. A book to break your heart and heal it.'--Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist

'The Best We Could Do burns back the dead skin of public War memory. Underneath is the raw flesh of another kind of war story of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brutally intimate and intimately brutal. This book is a must-read.' --Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, The Asian American Literary Review, curator for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

'Devastating and luminous' Tom Hart, author and illustrator of the #1 New York Times bestseller Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir
'Drawn in black and washed throughout with a rusty red that at once evokes blood ties and stained histories, Bui's memoir is a reflection on parental love and inherited sorrow that which cannot be escaped, and that which can.' ArtReview Asia
'Tackling a wide range of evergreen issues, such as parenthood, immigration and displacement, I'd highly recommend you give this graphic novel a go! 5/5' --Bookspoils blog

'This bold, brutal book is the new calligraphy an exquisite marriage of alphabet and imagery. Each sentence, each scene, and each story breaks down a country, a family, and a father. Then, frame by frame, with artistic vigor and monastic devotion, Thi Bui rebuilds a world in which guilt conquers grief and gratitude becomes not only a guide, but our new Deity. The Best We Could Do teaches us how to say no to fear and yes to truth.' --Fae Myenne Ng, author of Bone, a PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist, Steer Toward Rock, winner of the American Book Award

From the Author:

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam three months before the end of the Vietnam War, and came to the United States in 1978 as part of the "boat people" wave of refugees from Southeast Asia. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) has been selected as both an Indies Introduce and Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title, and a Junior Library Guild Selection. She is also the illustrator of A Different Pond, a children’s book by Bao Phi (Capstone, 2017). Thi taught high school in New York City and was a founding teacher of Oakland International High School, the first public high school in California for recent immigrants and English learners. She currently teaches in the MFA in Comics program at the California College of the Arts. She lives in Berkeley with her son, her husband and her mother.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1419718770
• ISBN 13: 9781419718779
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336