The Best We Could Do is a 2017 illustrated memoir written by Thi Bui. It chronicles Thi Bui's parents' life before and during the Vietnam War, their escape from Vietnam when Bui was a child, and their eventual migration to the United States as refugees. The novel was published on March 7, 2017. [1]
The idea for the novel began when Bui was working on her Master's thesis and conducted oral history interviews with her parents. According to Bui, under the umbrella of academic work and oral history, she began having long and difficult conversations with her parents about topics that were uncomfortable for them to share. [2] Bui shared her family's history in the thesis project, but that work was ultimately only available to her family and her graduate school advisor and peers. She wanted to share her work on a larger scale. For the next ten years, she trained herself to draw comics and developed the novel. Bui claims she was inspired by other autobiographical graphic novels like Art Spiegelman's Maus and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis . [3]
The novel touches on many themes, including family, parenthood, belonging, the meaning of home, and the importance of education. [4]
It also touches on important themes such as historical memory and narrative. In telling her parents' story, Bui offers a different narrative about the Vietnam War from the one usually seen in American films and textbooks. [2] Bui also focuses on how members of her family will remember the same events differently, and the differences can be based on the person's gender, class, politics, life experiences, etc. Bui has publicly stated that it is important to her and her family that the novel be "good for the Vietnamese people," and that motivated her parents to reveal their hardships in the novel. [2]
The novel is an autobiography and a refugee story, and in interviews Bui has expressed her thoughts on contemporary immigration issues in the United States and how important narrative and storytelling is to humanize immigrants. [5]
The Best We Could Do has earned starred reviews. Publishers Weekly says, "Bui transmutes the base metal of war into gold...", [6] and the Library Journal cautions readers, "Be prepared to take your heart on an emotional roller-coaster..." [7]
It has also earned positive reviews in other journalistic sources. Abraham Riesman, writing for news site Vulture, praises Bui's prose and claims, “I set out to dog-ear every brilliant piece of compact phrasing; my book is now twice as thick on the top as it is on the bottom.” [8] The Best We Could Do is on lists like The Washington Post 's "The 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2017" [9] and The Cut's "6 Graphic Novels to Make You Cry," [10] and Bill Gates' "5 Amazing Books I Read This Year." [11]
The Best We Could Do won the American Book Award [12] and was nominated for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in the autobiography genre. [13] It made it to the top 30 finalists in the latter. [14] The novel also received an Eisner Award nomination.
The book has also been well received by universities across the United States. It was the 2017-2018 Common Book at UCLA [4] and the 2018-2019 Common Book at the University of Oregon. [15]
The Best We Could Do has been so well received Bui has even had offers for film rights, but she has declined all of them. [2] Bui does not trust a movie to represent her family's Vietnamese-American experience, because there are "too many bad Vietnam War movies out there". [2] Hollywood would have to hire more Vietnamese actors and change the ways it represents Asian and Vietnamese people before she would consider selling the film rights. [2]
2017 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist [16]
2018 American Library Association Notable Books Selection [17]
2018 American Book Award [18]
Phan Thị Kim Phúc, referred to informally as the girl in the picture and the napalm girl, is a South Vietnamese-born Canadian woman best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, titled "The Terror of War", taken at Trảng Bàng during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972.
Indochine is a 1992 French period drama film set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement. The screenplay was written by novelist Érik Orsenna, screenwriters Louis Gardel and Catherine Cohen, and director Régis Wargnier. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Pérez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards, and Deneuve was nominated for Best Actress.
An autobiographical comic is an autobiography in the form of comic books or comic strips. The form first became popular in the underground comix movement and has since become more widespread. It is currently most popular in Canadian, American and French comics; all artists listed below are from the U.S. unless otherwise specified.
Lê Thị Diễm Thúy is a Vietnamese American poet, novelist, and performer. Her pen name is lowercase: lê thị diễm thúy.
The Quiet American is a 2002 political drama film and the adaptation of Graham Greene's bestselling 1955 novel set in Vietnam, The Quiet American. It is directed by Phillip Noyce and stars Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, and Do Thi Hai Yen.
Phạm Thị Hoài is an influential contemporary Vietnamese writer, editor and translator, living in Germany.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Vietnam face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. From 2000, both male and female forms of same-sex sexual activity are legal and are believed to never have been criminalized in Vietnamese history. However, same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are ineligible for the legal protections available to heterosexual couples. Vietnam provides limited anti-discrimination protections for transgender people. The right to change gender was officially legalized in Vietnam after the National Assembly passed an amendment to the Civil Code in 2015.
Daughter from Đà Nẵng is a 2002 documentary film about an Amerasian, Heidi Bub, meeting her biological family in Da Nang, decades after being brought to the United States in 1975 during Operation Babylift at the end of the Vietnam War.
Miss Vietnam is a beauty contest in Vietnam that has been held biennially since 1988. Miss Vietnam is the oldest and most prestigious national beauty pageant of Vietnam. Since 2024, Miss Vietnam will represent Vietnam at Miss International.
Do Thi Hai Yen is a Vietnamese actress. She was born in Bac Ninh Province and grew up in Hanoi where she graduated from the Vietnamese Ballet School after seven years of study.
The Miss Universe Vietnam is a national beauty pageant in Vietnam to select the country's representative to the Miss Universe, one of the Big Four major international beauty pageants. It is held every two years.
The Gangster We Are All Looking For is the first novel by Vietnamese-American author lê thi diem thúy, published in 2003. It was first published as a short piece in The Best American Essays of 1997 and was also awarded a Pushcart Prize “Special Mention.”
Oanh Thi "Cecilia" Bui, written in Vietnamese as "Bùi Thị Oanh" and known by the stage name Lệ Thu, was a Vietnamese singer. Born in Hải Phòng, she was well known in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s for singing the songs of singer-songwriters such as Trịnh Công Sơn and Phạm Duy. She released 24 singles and numerous albums with famous overseas Vietnamese singers like Khánh Ly, Hương Lan and Tuấn Ngọc.
Hà Thị Cầu was a famous Vietnamese xẩm singer. Cầu was one of six traditional singers whose works were selected for study and preservation in the late 1990s.
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American professor and novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
Viet comics, also known as mạn họa, are comics or graphic novels originating from Vietnam. The term Viet comics was created by “Floral Age Bimonthly” magazine in 1960.
A Different Pond is a 2017 children's picture book by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui. The book tells the story of a boy and his father going fishing. Phi created the book because of his desire to have books about people like himself to read to his daughter. Bui's detailed illustrations allowed Phi to remove elements of the prose. Bui, who had never illustrated a traditional picture book before, won praise for her use of colors and was recognized with a 2018 Caldecott Honor. The book received positive reviews and appeared on best of 2017 book lists.
Thi Bui is a Vietnam-born American graphic novelist and illustrator. She is most known for her illustrated memoir, The Best We Could Do.
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is a Vietnamese poet and novelist. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction in Vietnamese and English. She started her writing career with poetry in Vietnamese and has been honored with some of the top literary awards in Vietnam including the Poetry of the Year 2010 Award from the Hanoi Writers Association, First Prize, the Poetry about 1,000 Years Hanoi, as well as the Capital's Arts & Literature Award. Her debut novel, and first book written in English, The Mountains Sing, was released in 2020. The novel is a fictional family saga that gives voice to rarely documented historical events. The book has become an international bestseller, and was runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Best Debut Award, the 2021 International Book Awards, the 2021 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for Fiction. Quế Mai's writing has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in major publications including the New York Times. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. She was named by Forbes Vietnam as one of 20 inspiring women of 2021. Her second novel written in English, Dust Child, was released in March 2023.
Glorious Ashes is a 2022 Vietnamese-language drama film directed and written by Bùi Thạc Chuyên. It is an adaptation of two short stories, Glorious Ashes and Drifting Firewood, taken from the Đảo (Island) short story collection by Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Ngọc Tư. The film has an ensemble cast including Lê Công Hoàng, Juliet Bảo Ngọc Doling, Phương Anh Đào, Ngô Quang Tuấn, Ngô Phạm Hạnh Thuý, Thạch Kim Long, Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Hiệp and Mai Thế Hiệp. Set in Thơm Rơm village of Cà Mau, the story revolves around three women, their journey of love and their efforts to keep their men. The imagery of fire and ashes appears throughout as a metaphor for the passion and longing of these women.