“Every casualty in war is someones grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother, sister, child, lover”

Up until very recently, I have shyed away from graphic books because I think somewhere between crossing the line from children’s books (which I am also back to reading because I love children’s books) and reading grown up books I adopted this strange fear that reading books with graphics and pictures wasn’t actually reading. I kept thinking this for a while, looking at graphic novels, touching them and then slowly backing away right before I was accused of not being a “real” reader. 

That is until I came across Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, “The Best We Could Do” and I decided that the story sounded far more important than any reading hang ups that I had developed over the years. I picked this beautifully illustrated and poetic book as my holiday read – thinking since I had recently moved to a new continent during a global pandemic I needed something light and  I am glad to say that this book went against all my expectations and did not give me the lightness I expected but rather gave me a need for deep and necessary reflection. 

The Best We Could Do is a graphic memoir of writer Thi Bui who was born three months before the end of the Vietnam War who moved to the United States in 1978. The book explores the lives of the author’s family before and after moving to the United States. It is a book about immigration, the lasting effects of being displaced and the impact on her family as a whole. Thi Bui was prompted to explore the story of her family and their origins after becoming a mother herself and reflecting on the innumerable sacrifices that her parents have made for her and her siblings. 

To say that I enjoyed this book is probably an under statement. I always love a book that makes me immediately pull up google and read up about a place or an event that took place that I never paid much attention to. Having grown up in South Africa there are just certain aspects of the world that I simply was not aware of. I took no history in school and even when I had the opportunity to learn I just wasn’t ready to read about the lives and the displacements of other people given the history of displacement that most South Africans have. The Best We Could Do is a story about life, love, war, the impact of war on life and love and so much more. It is a story about parenthood, about choosing a life not for yourself but for your children because you had to and nothing else mattered.  

What the author does with the words and the imagery in this book is makes the reader go through an entire spectrum of emotions and by putting you in a position where you question what it feels like to be displaced and to have your entire world change, what it means to try your best to succeed in a foreign place and what if you had to do all that and still ensure that your children survived and thrived.

“I think a lot of Americans forget that for the Vietnamese the war continued, whether America was involved or not.”

I am not a parent myself however I could see how becoming a new parent might have pushed the author to look into her history and the history of parents. I think there are certain moments in life that make us acutely aware of the many things that we took for granted and having turned 31 this year one of those things for me has been looking at all the people who came before me in my family and the small steps they each took to put me in a position to be in a better place right now. 

I loved this book. I found the words to have a rhythm about them that made the book hard to put down and I found the images on the pages to be beautiful and intricate. This is the sort of book that will make you want to examine your lineage and will have you questioning why more of us aren’t bold enough to tell our stories and to tell them in this way. 

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a story of family, love, war and life that is told beautifully and that engages you in a way that leaves you with lots of questions for yourself and for the those who have come before you.