Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”
September 17, 2018
The Best We Could Do
I spent much of my teenage years as a lackluster farm laborer working for a historian of the Vietnam War. The historian would sometimes join me in the fields where she would tell stories of her time as a photojournalist during the war. I listened as intently as I could in between shoveling manure into a wheelbarrow. But my mind was elsewhere. During the past decade I’ve often thought about how much I could have learned back then. I regret having missed an opportunity to learn from a historian who had spent years as a war correspondent. I recently read Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, a graphic memoir of the author’s family’s experience during the Vietnam War and their immigration to the United States, to partially absolve me of my teenage disinterestedness during those years on the farm. As an aspiring historian, I wondered how much a graphic memoir could teach me about “doing” history.
Bui spent years interviewing family members about their lives in Vietnam and their immigration to the US. Of conversations with her father, Bui writes, “It took a long time to learn the right questions to ask. When I did, the stories poured forth with no beginning or end—anecdotes without shape, wounds beneath wounds.” The conversations Bui recorded became the foundation for The Best We Could Do. Her primary research with immigrants is indicative of how oral histories can be useful for migration scholars. Sociologist Chien-Juh Gu writes that, “Many migration scholars have relied on qualitative interviewing to acquire in-depth knowledge of the immigrants’ life experiences. This approach not only gives the immigrant a voice, but the vivid portraits of each community bring immigrant experience to life.” Combining oral history with her obvious talents as a cartoonist, Bui is able to truly reify “vivid portraits” to “bring immigrant experience to life.” Bui and her interview subjects, although they are represented as cartoons, confide in the reader.
Successful historians open windows for readers to glimpse meanings of the past. Bui’s book, then, is a kind of looking glass. We see the past, the present, and we get glimpses of the future. By way of an example, Bui relates how going into labor returns memories of her childhood to her. On the very same page, the author presents panels of herself in the hospital about to become a mother, and another panel of her as a child reflecting on overhearing a conversation between her parents about their respective lives in Vietnam. Later, in another series of panels, she reflects, “My parents escaped Vietnam on a boat so their children could grow up in freedom…I am now older than my parents were when they made that incredible journey. But…” Here the author, represented in one panel as an adult, then presents her character as a child: “I fear that around them, I will always be a child.” Bui writes that she is “seeking an origin story that will set everything right.” She wonders how an origin story might contribute to her American-born son’s knowledge of himself. In Bui’s hands, past, present, and future constellate.
Few historians will follow Bui’s footsteps into cartooning, but we will do well to remember how cartoonists utilize a method of call and response in their work. Cartoonists present illustrations, but they also leave room for their readers to imagine what happens in between the panels. This confluence, at least to my mind, represents a kind of collaboration between author and reader. With Bui’s work, we can imagine her family’s experiences in Vietnam and the United States. Having finished The Best We Could Do, I felt as if I had finally—unlike those years spent doing chores at the farm—listened.
