The Best We Could Do

 By Thi Bui

Abrams Comicarts     2018

344 pages     Graphic Memoir    

Not too long ago, I was exposed to the concept of inherited trauma, identified in the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors. (Here is an article that discusses the concept.) Certainly the graphic memoir The Best We Could Do perfectly describes inherited trauma. The book is a fascinating look at Thi Bui’s family history leading up to their migration from Viet Nam to the United States and the years following their arrival. Notes on the book suggest that the book is about “the search for a better future and a longing for the past.” She indicated that the stories her parents told her “cast a shadow over her life.” Creating this graphic memoir helped her make sense of the trauma, and when she had her own son, she intended to filter out the trauma “so she could pass on something cleaner.”

Thi Bui is an illustrator and writer, best known for this haunting memoir, which is the Kalamazoo Public Library Community Read for 2022. It is a fascinating choice, and the author will be in Kalamazoo in March. The Best We Could Do tells the story of Bui’s birth and early years in war-torn Viet Nam and the family’s daring escape after the fall of South Viet Nam in the 1970s. In part, the narrative helps Thi Bui understand her father’s mental health  issues as well as her own struggles as a new mother. By drawing the story of her mother’s life, she probes deeply into the divisions that society creates. By seeking to remember the family’s struggles adapting to culture of the United States, she appreciates the bubble her parents created to keep the Vietnamese culture alive in their children’s lives. All of this Bui tells through compelling pictures and poetic text.

The illustrated memoir is the perfect vehicle for Bui to tell her story. She is greatly talented and I could not take my eyes off the pictures. In an interview with NPR, Bui says she sought to “weave the personal and the political and the historical to tell a story of the Viet Nam War and all the things that caused it, in a way that I felt like I hadn’t seen before.” Indeed she has done just that. The story of the war is compelling, in part because it comes from the Vietnamese perspective rather than the American soldier perspective.

I also was very intrigued by the comparison of The Best We Could Do with Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Currently Maus and the retelling of the trauma of the Holocaust is the brunt of a censorship battle in public schools across the country, and I am curious to know if Bui’s book could undergo the same kind of scrutiny. Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis faced the same kind of scrutiny in 2012, and I wrote about the banning  here and here. I am hopeful that this book can get through the community read events without facing censorship. I had thought that my 10-year-old granddaughter who loves graphic novels, would read it with me and then attend the presentation with me, but as I read the book, I realized that perhaps 5^th grade is a little early for the book, although I think it would be very appropriate for middle and high school students.

My trip in 2018 to Vietnam and Cambodia was an eye-opening experience for me, primarily in the understanding of resilience and growth. The Vietnamese are beautiful people, and as they are presented by Thi Bui, worthy of all that the world can offer them.  I highly recommend The Best We Could Do.

 

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

by Roz Chast

Bloomsbury     2014

224 pages     Graphic Memoir

First a disclaimer: This is not a good book to read when you are almost 72 years old, have just had an accident that cracked your pelvis, are using a walker, and feeling very vulnerable. That being said, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant is a remarkable memoir of parental decline and death through Roz Chast's eyes. 

Chast is one of The New Yorker's premier cartoonists, and in trying to memorialize her parents, she does what she does best and tells  her story as a graphic memoir. An only child, she was raised by educator parents—an overbearing mother and a sweet, but ill-defined father. Now, when they reach their 90s, she has to figure out a plan for their care and their eventual death. She must deal with the Brooklyn apartment where they have lived for many years. She must deal with their co –dependence, something  her parents celebrate. She must deal with her anger toward what she sees is the unfair way she was treated by her mother. The story, itself, is not so different from what most of us experience as we watch our parents decline and die. What makes Chast's book so special is the format and the tremendous impact made by Chast's style of writing and drawing.

The New York Times review says: "Cartoons, as it happens, are tailor-made for the absurdities of old age, illness and dementia, the odd dramas and grinding repetition expertly illustrated by copious exclamation points, capital letters and antic drawings. They also limit the opportunity for navel gazing and self-pity, trapping you in the surreal moments themselves. The recurring, maniacally angry face of Chast’s mother, which Chast eventually mimics, is one I have seen in my own mirror all too often."

Indeed there is much to learn from Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?. First, we learn that there is a need to have a discussion about these important things—not pleasant, but necessary. There is a need to declutter households. (This is one of my big deals.) There is a need to grieve what isn't, wasn't, or what could have been. There is a need to come to terms with life and with death. The most important moments of the book are at the end when Chast sketches her dying and then dead mother, because "I didn't know what else to do."  By allowing herself to bare her feelings in the best way she knows how, Chast has given us all an opportunity to allow our own feelings to emerge. 

 

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is the winner of numerous awards. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, named one of the New York Times best books of 2014, and the winner of several other awards.

New York Times review.

Here is a sketchbook from the New Yorker with pieces from Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?