“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. 

“She’d grown up in her mother’s eyes, no longer her daughter but a separate woman, complete with her own secrets”

I am going to start with pure honesty and say I have no idea where to start with this review, not only because this book was extremely popular but because this book earned and deserved every bit of the popularity it received. 

I actually put off reading this book because of how popular it was. My main reason for doing this was because I have found that in the past when I have read popular books at the height of their popularity I almost entirely miss the book. I am more likely to rush through the story and to base my enjoyment of the book on what everyone else says it should be. Yes, I am flimsy like that and I sometimes succumb to wanting to just fit in by enjoying a book that everyone enjoys.  With this book however, it turns out that I had no reason to worry.

I am one of those people who likes opening a book with no knowledge of what to expect and I tried to take in as little as was possible about this book (this was very hard because this was one of the most popular books of 2020), I went in as clueless as I could and I still I was not immune to the captivating quality that was this phenomenal book and Brit Bennett’s writing. 

“Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant – that they were not even men – and the world continued on”

The Vanishing Half is a book about twin sisters who come from a town called Mallard that prides itself on having an entirely light skinned African American population. The book moves between two time periods being the late 1960’s and the early to late 1980’s. In this book we follow the lives of of the sisters as one of them (Stella) makes a decision to pass and live her life as a white woman and the other (Desiree) lives her life as an African American woman. With what appears to be an already rich grounds for a story, Brit Bennett manages to somehow go the extra mile and not only give us the complex issue of sisters being apart from another and a history of passing and but she also allows us to explore the important topics of colourism, racism, abuse, and love. Love was by far my favourite part of this book and if a book should come out that consists of Jude and Reese just walking around eating sandwiches all day I am all here for it!

When I think back to the themes that were explored in this book my head nearly spins when I thinking of how brilliantly Brit Bennett juggled all these topics in 343 pages and while at the same time crafting characters that are easy to bond with on a very deep level. I remember reading a part of the book and pausing to cry because Jude and Reese seemed to be happy and the thought of any more sadness coming to them made me want to end the story right there,  but I didn’t because I was tied to Desiree, Early, Adele, Kennedy and Stella. I needed to know how everyone’s story was going to end. And that is the beauty of this book. 

This book unpacks so much with the patience of someone who is slowly telling you a story while basing your scalp with some coconut oil. The story felt as personal as having an old friend walk though your door, shaking their head in disbelief and saying “girl, have I got a tale for you?” That is how deeply invested I was in this story. Brit Bennett did a great job of telling us a story about the many forms of family and relationships take while opening us up to some very deep (and necessary) topics. 

This was a story of transformation for so many people and it was great to see their masks disappear as the characters became more and more of themselves, while others sunk deeper and deeper into the lives they built for themselves on top of the new versions of themselves that they had created.

I rated this book 4.5 starts (rounded up to 5) because I wanted more from the ending. I loved this book and I think the more I read the more I expected a notch above perfection (which might be a bit unfair) but I think the ending didn’t give me that, it took away a little bit from me and how much I loved this book. 

I think the book is worth the read. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It deserves the accolades it has received so far and it is definitely worth your time.