Thi Bui

Graphic memoirs are quickly becoming a favorite genre for me. This beautifully drawn volume is one of the reasons why. Thi Bui tells her immigration story along with her family's backstory of a life in Vietnam during the last century and the civil war and it's resolution in that country. The story is not sugar coated, but tinged with an honest portrayal of how parents communicate (or don't) with their children. This memoir is personal and intimate, but manages to impart a great deal of show more history about Vietnam and it's history told from a point of view that is not American. That alone makes this a necessary and worthwhile read. But the element of this book that makes it an absolute must read for me is the author's telling each of her parent's stories separately. Illustrating as well as her artwork that we each have our own stories, even if they sometimes overlap with someone else's. Highly recommended.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks! show less

:Afishing trip is not just a fishing trip in this poignant, semiautobiographical tale.

As a young boy growing up in a Vietnamese refugee family in Minneapolis, Phi would wake up “hours before the sun comes up” to go fishing with his dad. Right from the start, he hints at his family’s dire straits: “In the kitchen the bare bulb is burning.” Readers learn they are up so early because his dad got a second job. And Phi asks innocently, “If you got another job, why do we still have to show more fish for food?” At the pond, father and son share moments of tenderness. A nod here—when Phi lights a fire with one strike of a match; a warning there—to avoid “the spicy stuff” in his bologna sandwich. Father and son also bond through stories. “I used to fish by a pond like this one when I was a boy in Vietnam,” says Dad. “With your brother?” Phi asks. Dad nods and looks away, a clue to the unspeakable devastation of the war. When they catch enough fish for dinner they head home, Phi dreaming about the landscape of Dad’s home country. Together, Phi’s gentle, melodic prose and Bui’s evocative art, presented in brushy and vividly colored panels and double-page spreads, rise above the melancholy to tell a powerful, multilayered story about family, memory, and the costs of becoming a refugee.

Spare and simple, a must-read for our times. (Picture book. 5-9): www.kirkusreviews.com, A Kirkus Starred Review show less

In 1978 three-year-old Thi Bui and her family fled Vietnam and became one of the hundreds of thousands of ″boat people″ seeking asylum in other countries. Her memoir, in graphic novel form, is both a family history and a glimpse of how becoming a mother influenced her understanding of that history. Her illustrations are stark and entirely in orange and black, well-suited to a war setting.

The book begins factually, with the birth of her son, and ends philosophically with a reflection on show more what she has learned as both a daughter and a mother. In between are the stories she learned from each of her parents about their childhoods, as well as their life together as they try to build a family amongst the war and its aftermath. The things they lived through are horrible, as are the life-long effects of the trauma. That trauma is shared by the children of the survivors both directly and indirectly.

The first graphic novel in which I encountered the multi-generational effects of wartime trauma is [Maus] by Art Spiegelman. In it he recounts not only the experiences of his parents at Auschwitz, but also the effect that weighty history had on how he was raised and his uneasy relationship with that history. Similarly Bui wrestles with the stories she has heard from her parents and siblings, and how those stories have influenced her identity.

The structure of the book is confusing in places, as the author moves recursively through time from various perspectives and her extended family moved repeatedly as their political alliances changed and the war surged. But I think it adds to the feeling that this is almost an oral history that Bui has attempted to capture and recount. The book was widely acclaimed when it was published in 2017, and she has since gone on to collaborate with Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of [The Sympathizer], on a children′s book. show less

This is the heartfelt graphic novel about Thi Bui and her family’s life in Vietnam during the war, their subsequent escape by boat, growing up in San Diego, and her determination to uncover the stories of the past as an adult. The horror and struggles make this a compelling read in their own right, even if you’re aware of similar accounts, but perhaps where the book shines brightest is when Bui comes to understand her father’s trauma and connects it to why he acted as he did later in show more life. There is also a fascinating human story at the bottom of all of this – how her mother came to meet her father, how their relationship evolved over time, and how she gave birth to one of their children in a refugee camp. It’s quite a page-turner to learn more about these lives, and clearly a labor of love for Bui to have documented it.

There is also a historical account here as well, and some of the eye-opening bits were the French coming back to “reclaim their inheritance” after WWII, and the subsequent events, contrasted to American accounts. There are also descriptions of life under communism, e.g. the copying of Mao’s land “reforms” in China by Truong Chinh which killed 220,000 people, the burning of books, and the requirement to agree to unswervingly agree to the propaganda. Her father says, “A new regime that was both nationalist and communist, they had to kill all those people who were friends of the French. The communists, they called those things sacrifices.” She replies, “And you called them Grandmother and Grandfather.”

Maybe the most touching bit was when Bui described saving up what she thought was $100 to give to her mother as a Mother’s Day present as a child, but finding to her dismay that she had miscounted. She writes: “What if all my mother remembered was that I came up short?” It’s devastating, and a reminder to be forgiving of others who might have not acted ideally in a situation in our lives, and to remember what they were able to do. While processing her own sublimated anger, she ponders her roots, thinking of those who came before her that “My life is a gift that is too great – a debt I can never repay,” and of her own son that “I don’t see war and loss, I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence, and I think maybe he can be free.” Amidst a profoundly personal and specific story, she touches on things which are universal. I would love to see more from her. show less