On the Coffee Table: Thi Bui

Title: The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Writer and Artist: Thi Bui

via Amazon

In an extraordinary work of sequential art, Thi Bui documents her family's history through much of the 20th century to the present.  She shares all of the struggles through the wars - first with the French, then between the North and the South with the US taking the side of the latter - and beyond.  Her family made it to the States in 1978.

The Vietnam War had an enormous impact on American society.  Obviously, those who fought were affected deeply.  Television brought the battlefield right into civilian living rooms, affecting millions more.  Countless books have been written.  Academy Award-winning films and documentary mini-series were made.  Vietnam is, for many in the Baby Boomer generation, the defining event of their young adulthood.  

What is lost through nearly all of this storytelling is the Vietnamese perspective.  In American history, Vietnam is painted as the first war we lost because the expressed objectives were not achieved.  But who won, exactly?  Yes, thousands of American soldiers were killed.  But the Vietnamese deaths - both North and South - counted in the millions.  Never mind the long-term, catastrophic damage the American military brought to a primarily agricultural country in the form of napalm and Agent Orange.  Sure, the Communists marched into Saigon anyway but the damage exacted by the United States exceeded that suffered by the United States many times over.

Bui's narrative lays plain the realities.  She also makes clear, her family was fortunate to survive.

Her story isn't all war trauma.  The books starts with a quick, two-page history of Vietnam from 111 BC to 1975 AD.  Then we're taken to the labor ward of a New York hospital where Bui awaits the birth of her first child.  Throughout, the tale shifts back and forth between present and past.  It is the rare memoir that lives simultaneously - and successfully - in the personal, the familial, the local and the global.  For anyone interested in history, Asia and/or the immigrant experience, The Best We Could Do is highly recommended.